An Icelandic pilot who dropped his iPhone while flying a plane over a flooded river received a surprising call one year later.

Photography-tour guide Haukur Snorrason was flying over the swollen Skaftá in southern Iceland in the summer of 2018 to film the flooded area.

While recording on his iPhone 6s plus from an open plane window, he dropped the device while it was still taking a video of the scene.

Haukur reunited with his phone one year later. Credit: RUV/Haukur Snorrason/phototours.is

He asked a farmer the next day if he could look for it but he had no luck – and Haukur forgot about his phone until September this year.

“Now, just over a year later, I get a phone call saying people hiking there found my iPhone,” Haukur wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.

“I was pretty sure it was wrecked but for the fun of it I went and picked it up since [these] nice people took it back to Reykjavik.”

The pilot thought he had lost the device forever. Credit: RUV/Haukur Snorrason/phototours.is

Haukur was especially impressed his phone had survived the Icelandic winter.

The hikers who found the phone handed it to the landowner, who managed to charge the device and use it to find Haukur’s contact details.

Haukur was flying over a river. Credit: RUV/Haukur Snorrason/phototours.is

“And not only that, the video I was doing is still here so now you get to experience my iPhone take its own ‘flight’ to the ground and patiently wait for me there for one year,” he added.

The phone is still in good working condition.