iPhone 14's Emergency SOS via satellite feature leads to daring helicopter rescue

Montrose Search & Rescue
(Image credit: Montrose Search & Rescue)

Apple's Emergency SOS via satellite feature for the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro came to the rescue for a couple in California on Tuesday.

The Montrose Search and Rescue Team took to Twitter to share the story. According to the account, a couple was driving on the Angeles Forest Highway when their car went off the mountain, falling approximately three hundred feet into the canyon below.

The couple, incredibly, was able to get out of the car but found that there was no cellular signal in the canyon. Thankfully, one of them had an iPhone 14 model and was able to use the Emergency SOS via satellite feature to contact emergency services.

The emergency feature was able to communicate the exact latitude and longitude for the team to find the victims. According to the report, "Air Rescue 5 was able to locate the victims and insert a paramedic. The paramedic learned the patients, a male and female in their 20s, had mild to moderate injuries. The helicopter was able to hoist the victims out of the canyon and transport them to a local area hospital."

You can watch a video of the rescue below:

Emergency SOS via satellite launched in November

Emergency SOS via satellite is a new feature that is exclusive to the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro models. The feature, which launched in the United States and Canada back in November, will be available to iPhone 14 owners for free for the first two years.

Emergency SOS via satellite "combines custom components deeply integrated with software to allow antennas to connect directly to a satellite, enabling messaging with emergency services when outside of cellular or Wi-Fi coverage."

The feature also just launched this week in France, Germany, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. It is currently unknown which other countries Apple plans to launch the service.

Joe Wituschek
Contributor

Joe Wituschek is a Contributor at iMore. With over ten years in the technology industry, one of them being at Apple, Joe now covers the company for the website. In addition to covering breaking news, Joe also writes editorials and reviews for a range of products. He fell in love with Apple products when he got an iPod nano for Christmas almost twenty years ago. Despite being considered a "heavy" user, he has always preferred the consumer-focused products like the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPhone 13 mini. He will fight to the death to keep a mini iPhone in the lineup. In his free time, Joe enjoys video games, movies, photography, running, and basically everything outdoors.