Portland teacher ‘Bob’ recounts finding Alaska Airlines door plug in his yard

Bob Sauer, a science teacher at Catlin Gabel, was monitoring the news over the weekend about the blown-out door plug from the Alaska Airlines flight over Portland, but it wasn’t until Sunday night that he searched his yard — after his ex-wife called and alerted him that authorities suspected the part might have landed nearby.

Sauer, 64, grabbed a flashlight and decided to check around his house around 8 p.m. Sunday.

It was dark and raining out. As he stepped around the corner of his house, he shined his light along a bank of cedar trees that he and his children had planted about 20 years ago to separate his property from his neighbor.

Suddenly, he noticed something white gleaming in the beam of his flashlight. He stepped a little closer, and there was the “missing piece from the airplane,” he said.

“It was definitely an airplane part,” he realized. “It had the same curvature that the fuselage has, and had a window in it.”

He said the approximately 65-pound, 4-feet-by-2-feet part “had come down through those trees” and was leaning up against one of the branches, he said. There was no indication that it hit the ground hard.

There also was no crater, so he surmised the tree broke the fall. He didn’t touch it.

[Video shows apparent Alaska Airlines plug door in grass at suburban Portland home]

Instead, he went back in his house to search for a contact number for the National Transportation Safety Board. He said that took awhile, but he finally got through to a “watch officer” in the agency’s office in Washington, D.C.

The agency asked him for a photo of what he found, as he learned someone already had reported finding the plug, only to discover that it was a fluorescent light fixture. Once he sent the photos, they were excited, he said.

Sauer’s discovery occurred during an already scheduled 8 p.m. press conference in Portland by the National Transportation Safety Board. Someone rushed in once the agency learned of Sauer’s report, and board chair Jennifer Homendy updated reporters that the plug, indeed, had been found, after moments earlier saying it had not yet been located.

Homendy made the surprise announcement that a school teacher named “Bob” had found the part, and she then thanked “Bob.”

Sauer, who lives in the West Haven neighborhood west of Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, didn’t tell anyone other than his ex-wife, who lives about five blocks away, and a former Catlin Gabel science teacher, about his discovery. The two showed up at his house to take a look Sunday night. Sauer didn’t want anyone to disturb it before safety board officials had a chance to arrive.

[United Airlines found loose bolts and other issues on key part of grounded Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliners]

An NTSB crew came to his home about 7 a.m. Monday. They were like children in a candy store, they were “really excited” to find the part in one piece, he said. They took multiple photos of the piece as it sat in his trees, then carried it to his front yard, and took more photos.

It did not fall from a plane directly overhead, the NTSB crew told Sauer.

The air resistance, airplane and wind speed all were factors in where it landed, he said. The crew loaded the plug into a rental SUV and hauled it off. They planned to send it back to a lab in Washington, D.C.

When he showed up at Caitlin Gabel later Monday morning for his first class, about a dozen students and other teachers were already waiting outside the door to his Science-2 classroom called “Galileo.”

“Are you the Bob?’ they pressed to know. He spent the first 15 minutes of his astronomy class sharing his story.

The physics principle of terminal velocity was at play with this object falling from 16,000 feet up, Sauer explained.

He gave a brief lesson: “When something is falling through air, it will reach a final velocity,” he said. Terminal velocity is the maximum velocity attainable by an object as it falls through a fluid, which in this case is air.

“The door came down through the tree , so it didn’t make any indentation or anything in the ground,” Sauer said. He wasn’t around Friday night, and didn’t hear anything unusual, he added.

He’s glad it didn’t fall on his house, which likely would have punched a hole in the roof.

“Because it’s a pretty heavy object coming down at pretty high velocity,” the physics teacher said, speaking from a lab table inside his classroom.

“I’m curious to what actually happened that caused this,” he said. He said he’s thankful no one was hurt.

Now, he signs all his notes and emails: “The Bob, finder of missing aircraft parts.”