Investigators in Pennsylvania are crediting the signal from an iPad with helping them locate a man and his daughter after a plane crash. As reported by CNN, investigators used the signal from the daughter’s iPad after the plane disappeared from the radar shortly after its departure.
The story explains that the plane, a small single-engine Cessna 150, took off from Wilkes-Barre Scranton International Airport in Pittston Township, Pennsylvania on Sunday, and went “missing on radar shortly after its departure.” The pilot and his daughter were the only passengers on the plane.
After the plane went missing, investigators embarked on a five-hour “general search,” relying first on the “last known location of the plane.” This process, however, did not result in any success.
After pinging the last known location of the plane, rescue teams and about 30 other people started doing a grid search in the woods, being careful to not spread out too far since it was evening time, cold and snowy, but their search came up short.
Once rescue crews identified the pilot, they contacted his wife, who had been waiting for her husband and daughter at their destination, Serafin said, and got the man’s cell phone number.
[The rescue team] were able to ping the cell phone and they found out that the daughter had an iPad and with certain iPads, you’re able to ping signals to it and once we got that coordinate, that’s where we located them,” Chief James Serafin with the Bear Creek Volunteer Hose Company said.
By pinging the iPad’s location, the rescue was able to locate the pilot and his daughter in a “pre-hypothermic state” with only “minor injuries.” According to Serafin, it is a “miracle” that the two were located alive.
The crash is now under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration, though any more details are unclear.
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