Alaska Airlines door discovery: 'The most exciting thing to happen on this street'

A passenger said a teenage boy had his shirt ripped off as the aircraft suddenly depressurised in the Alaska Airlines incident last week.

It is thought it is only luck that the boy wasn't killed , Neil Connery has more

Unusual items landed in Beaver, Oregon, over the weekend after an Alaska Airlines plane had to make an emergency landing in Portland on Friday night.

A section of the fuselage, or "plug door" fell from an plane mid-flight and crashed into one man's garden.

No passengers during the flight were sat directly next to the section of the plane that blew off, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said on Saturday, and nobody died or suffered serious injuries.

"This is the most exciting thing that's happened on this street," Bob Sauer, the man who discovered the door on his lawn, told CNN.

The physics teacher decided to look for debris in his garden after local authorities announced they were searching the neighbourhood, and he noticed something strange.

A section of the fuselage fell from an plane mid-flight and crashed into one man's garden and a mobile phone landed in another

"I saw ... there was something gleaning back there which shouldn't have been there. I thought: 'Oh that's curious' so I went back to look at it and it turned out to be the door."

Mr Sauer is now hoping he can use his experience as a teaching point in the classroom.

"In my physics A class we've just finished talking about impulse and momentum, so that comes up as well, because the trees acted as an airbag," he said.

"They were more interested in my story than physics, for today anyway, but some of my colleagues were wondering how soon is it going to make it onto one of my tests."

And Mr Sauer wasn't the only person in the neighbourhood to make a peculiar discovery.

Another local, Sean Bates, decided to actively hunt for debris, and took a stroll along the roadside.

"I just took a walk around and was keeping my eyes open for anything that looked like it might be related, you know, seat cushion, SkyMall, evacuation card, something like that ... then saw a phone sitting on the side of the ground," he told CNN.

"The likelihood of finding a phone specifically where I found it? Pretty dang unlikely," he added.

The phone was in remarkable condition given that it had tumbled to the ground from a plane.

"When I opened it up it was unlocked sitting in airplane mode, still had half a battery there, and when I opened the screen it had a baggage claim for Alaska," he added.

Mr Sauer's neighbour Diane Faherty saw her dogs sniffing around an object on the patio.

"It's funny because I thought it was a headrest because I'd just been on an Alaska Airlines flight, and I'd noticed that they had new headrests," Ms Faherty said.

A friend let her know police were looking for airplane parts in the area, which led to her connecting the two incidents.

"Then I remembered the accident ... I mean what are the chances a fricking headrest dropping out of the sky?"

The National Transportation Safety Board was alerted to all of the discoveries, and encouraged other people to continue looking for debris as they piece together exactly what happened on the flight.

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