It took two days to find a door-shaped piece of a plane that was propelled into the air Friday evening when it detached from its host aircraft.
Bob Sauer, a high school teacher, said he hadn't found the panel, called a door plug, in his backyard sooner because he didn't look. On Sunday, he said, a neighbor suggested he check his property, but he took his time, eventually searching his backyard that night with a flashlight.
"It still didn't seem very likely to me," Sauer, who lives in the Portland, Oregon, area said in an interview with NBC News on Monday evening.
He had followed the news of Friday's accident, when the door plug blew out of a Boeing 737 Max 9 that was filled almost to capacity with passengers.
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The accident during the Alaska Airlines flight exposed a large opening in the fuselage and prompted the pilots to turn back to Portland International Airport for a safe emergency landing, they said. No major injuries were reported.
During his nighttime search, Sauer, who teaches physics, spotted something amid the trees he'd planted 20 years ago.
Read the full story at NBCNews.com here.
