A military aeroplane with 21 people aboard was lost over Chile’s sea this weekend. It disappeared from radar and the authorities didn’t know where it crashed. Surprisingly, they started to recover their bodies thanks to Apple’s Find My iPhone feature.
Remains from the CASA 212 from Chile’s Air Force were found floating in the sea near Tierra Banca and Playa Larga, in a zone between the islands of Robinson Crusoe and Santa Clara, and Juan Fernández airport.
The crash point was located thanks to one of the victims’ relatives. The victim had an active iPhone at the time of the crash. Presumably out of desperation, the relative tried the Find My iPhone feature that Apple offers for iOS devices. Surprisingly, the phone appeared on the map in the computer, according to one of the military officials in charge of the search operation:
One of the passengers carried [an iPhone] . When it fell into the sea, it was located and one of the relatives sent us that information.
The search teams — on the image — are now trying to recover the bodies from the bottom of the sea using two Proteus 1000 robots, but the weather conditions are extremely bad at this time. Military divers will start the recovery as soon as the conditions clear up, but four bodies have been found already.
What is surprising is that the iPhone survived the impact and continued to work, even more because the crash was really bad, according to the military sources:
None of the pieces so far recovered is bigger than 50 centimeters (20 inches) which confirms that the aeroplane suffered a high fragmentation [on impact]
The iPhone, which apparently survived the crash for some time,
they really didn’t know the aircraft’s last position themselves.
[Infobae]