Father and daughter are saved from freezing to death by the iPad after a small plane crash

On Sunday, a 58-year old pilot and his 13-year old daughter were flying in a two-seat single-engine Cessna 150 that took off from Wilkes-Barre Scranton International Airport in Pennsylvania. Not long after takeoff, the plane went off the radar screen. CNN reports that a five-hour search took place with the United States Air Force Rescue Coordination Center involved.

Chief James Serafin with the Bear Creek Volunteer Hose Company told CNN that the area where the plane went down is not known to have many survivors because of the terrain. "From what I hear and see, you don't really hear of survivors, especially in the area that they crashed, it's very heavily wooded. They had to go through trees and everything else." After pinging the last location of the plane, rescue teams used a grid pattern to try and find the wreck.

Rescue crews were able to identify the pilot and once they had his name, they contacted his wife who had been waiting for her husband and daughter at the destination. The Wife gave rescuers her husband's cell phone number and Chief Serafin explained that "They (the rescue team) were able to ping the cell phone and they found out that the daughter had an iPad."

The chief pointed out that "with certain Apple iPad tablets, you're able to ping signals to it and once we got that coordinate, that's where we located them." The chief said that the pair were huddled together trying to stay warm.

The father and daughter were both found in a pre-hypothermic state and suffered minor injuries. CNN says because of their injuries, they both remain in the hospital. Luckily, there were no fatalities and the FAA is investigating the crash.

We've told you several times about how the Apple Watch saved users' lives. We have even written articles over the years about iPhone models that have taken a bullet for their owners saving them from a painful death. Handsets that have paid the ultimate price to save a human over the years include the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 (which took a bullet for its owner),  a BlackBerry model (not the Storm although many owners were willing to put that model out of its misery), a Nokia Lumia 520, and an HTC EVO 3D.

But going back through our archives, we couldn't find a situation where an iPad was the device that reportedly saved a person's life. And that makes some sense. Even though the iPad is a mobile device, it doesn't actually fit in your pocket. Of course, that might change when and if Apple introduces a foldable iPhone that uses a design cue from the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3.

So as far as we can tell, this incident marks the first time that an Apple iPad was instrumental in saving a life. And we are not getting too melodramatic about this since it seems that the father and daughter were already in a pre-hypothermic state when discovered.

The iPad did do plenty of heavy lifting last year when the pandemic broke. Employees working at home purchased iPads so that they could work from home while students learning remotely did the same thing. And at the end of the day, when work was over and homework was completed, the same iPad was used to stream movies, play games, chat with friends, and more.

Apple saw iPad shipments rise 24% to 58.8 million over calendar 2020 when compared to calendar 2019. For the fiscal year 2021 which ended this past September, Apple delivered $31.86 billion in iPad units which were up a healthy 34.32% on an annual basis. As long as COVID-19 is rearing its head somewhere in the world, iPad shipments have the potential to continue to rise.