Oregon teacher 'surprised' to find plane part in tree

STORY: "In the flashlight beam I could see that there was something gleaming white underneath the trees in the back that isn't normally there," Sauer told Reuters on Monday (January 8) from his large garden near the suburb the National Transportation Safety Board had identified as a possible landing spot.

U.S. authorities investigating the incident on the Boeing 737 MAX 9 that depressurized the plane, leading to an emergency landing, had asked people in the Cedar Hills suburb of Portland, Oregon to look out for the missing door plug as a vital piece of evidence.

Sauer had found a panel known as a mid-cabin door plug that is used to replace an exit that would be installed on planes configured to carry more passengers.

Sauer, a science teacher whose students had just been learning about the physics principles of impulse and momentum, said his trees had acted like an air bag.