Last year, when then-Senator Obama was busy criss-crossing the country in support of his presidential bid, he ran into some trouble on one of his flights. At the time, we were told that it wasn’t a big deal and, of course, it landed safely. But now as more details come out, things appear to have been somewhat more serious.

The President was on an MD-80 chartered from Midwest Airlines. The only thing unique about this airplane is that it was actually flown by Midwest – that’s more rare than seeing a panda in the wild. As the plane was climbing, the crew had trouble controlling the airplane’s pitch (nose up attitude), so they ended up diverting to St Louis. Here’s what the President would have felt:

It should be noted that while 16 to 20 degrees is normal, some flights do reach 25 degrees. So this wasn’t completely out of the ordinary at 26.8 degrees, but it could have gotten much worse had the crew not been able to stabilize the plane.

What happened? Well, in the tail of the MD-80, there is an emergency exit. On this particular flight, the slide at that exit inflated and pressed on the cables controlling the elevators. The elevators are used to make the plane go up and down, so this pressure made the plane go up a little too much. The pilots did regain control, and once they descended, things seemed to go back to normal and they landed safely.

There has only been two other incidents remotely like this one in the past, and one of those happened on the ground, so this is a very rare occurrence. Still, that must have been one wild ride.

Here’s a weird one for you. Yesterday, Southwest flight 2294 diverted to Charleston, West Virginia when a football-sized hole opened up in the top of the fuselage. And thanks to the magic of Twitter, someone had posted a picture from inside the cabin right after it happened. Click at left to blow it up.

Southwest 2294 was supposed to go from Nashville to Baltimore. It appears that as it passed through 34,000 feet on the way to its cruise altitude, the hole opened up and the plane lost pressure. The crew sent the plane into a rapid descent (as required in order to get to breathable air) and 7 minutes later they were at 11,000 feet. In case you were wondering, that descent would normally take at least double that amount of time if not more. About 20 minutes after that, they had an uneventful landing in Charleston, West Virginia.

All accounts that I’ve seen have said that Southwest handled this really well. The plane was on the ground just after 6p, and Southwest was able to find a new plane, get it to Charleston (a place they don’t serve) and get back in the air at 945p. They arrived in Baltimore a little more than four hours after original scheduled arrival. An impressive move, indeed.

Now let’s get back to that airplane. This was N387SW, a 737-300 that was delivered brand new to the airline on June 29, 1994. So it’s only about 15 years old. (Fun fact for me: I actually rode that plane on November 18, 1994 from Phoenix to Burbank.)

I’m sure we’ll hear plenty of speculation that compares this relatively minor incident to Aloha Airlines 243, the plane that became a convertible mid-flight. Don’t remember that one? Maybe this will refresh your memory.

That’s right. This one truly became a convertible. Incredibly, the only person who died was a flight attendant who wasn’t strapped in. The plane landed safely, and it was impressive enough for a cheesy TV movie to be made about it. But let’s not jump to conclusions about this Southwest flight.

The Aloha incident started with a small hole as this Southwest one did, but then something went wrong. The 737 fuselage is designed so that if a hole does develop, it will remain isolated. That’s what happened with the Southwest flight, and the aircraft maintained structural integrity. For that reason, this was effectively a non-event.

The Aloha flight was on a 19 year old 737-200, an earlier version of the 737 than in the Southwest incident. That aircraft had frequent, short flights in salty and humid conditions that ended up causing corrosion. So on that plane, the initial hole, caused by corrosion, quickly created outdoor seating as the fuselage gave way. That led to some major changes in terms of corrosion inspection.

On the Southwest plane, the question is a more simple one. Since the fuselage stayed intact, the only real question is . . . what caused the hole in the first place? That’s what I’ll be interested in finding out.

It’s been well over 24 hours since we first heard that an Air France A330 disappeared over the ocean on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. In that time, I’ve seen a million different theories about what happened, and that always makes me angry. We have no idea what happened here, and really, we’ll be lucky if we ever find out. Here’s what we do know about the accident.

• Air France #447, operated by a 4-year-old A330, left Rio at 703p bound for Paris
• The airplane was off the coast of Brazil, beyond radar coverage when it hit some rough weather
• Something bad happened and a bunch of technical faults were automatically sent to Air France, but the pilots never sent a distress message
• The plane never arrived in Paris

Really, that’s all we know. And remember, while there were storms in the area alongside reports of strong turbulence, we have nothing to indicate that turbulence caused the accident. Also, those automated technical fault messages that were received by Air France stating that there had been an electrical problem and pressurization was lost (among other things)? Even if that did happen (false reports are always possible), we still have no clue why any of that happened, and there could be a million explanations.

There were no distress calls from the pilots, and I can only think of three reasons that might happen. Either the radios failed (highly unlikely), the pilots did this on purpose (even more unlikely), or it happened so fast that there wasn’t even time for a radio call (most likely). It makes me sick just thinking about what it was like on that plane toward the end.

I think it’s safe to say that this isn’t going to end up like the TV show “Lost.” This airplane is likely in a million pieces scattered on and in the Atlantic Ocean. At some point, search teams will find a debris field, and they might be able to put together some fact-based theories. But the true jewel here will be the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder; the so-called black boxes. Those might be at the bottom of the ocean, but hopefully they’ll be recovered with good data still retrievable. Without those, it’s going to be incredibly hard to figure out what really happened.

Right now, the list of suspects is long, and it’s certainly baffling. Airplanes just don’t fall out of the sky, not even during severe turbulence. There were other airplanes flying through the area that made it safely, and I’m sure those pilots will be interviewed. For example, Iberia 6024 left Rio for Madrid 20 minutes after the Air France flight. Lufthansa 507 left Sao Paulo for Frankfurt about half an hour before the Air France flight, so they might have been fairly close to each other. Air France itself had another A330 leave Sao Paulo for Paris only 27 minutes later. And these are just some of the aircraft in the neighborhood.

Hopefully we will learn more about what happened here, because none of the theories that keep being flung out there by the media seem to make sense on their own. As always, this will end up being a series of different problems that come together to form a true catastrophe.

ExpressJet To Fly 10 Planes for United This Summer
Looks like ExpressJet is flying for United this summer, and it seems like a win-win for everyone considering the circumstances.

Delta Pulls Out of Boston – Baltimore Route
That didn’t take long. Delta is pulling out of the Boston-Baltimore route, but can the remaining three make a living on their own? I doubt it.

Hearings on the Buffalo Q400 Crash Begin Today
The hearings on the downed Q400 begin today, and fingers look to be heading toward Colgan’s training and the pilot onboard.

Virgin America Shows Worse Q4 Numbers Excluding Lower Fuel Prices
Low fuel prices made Q4 look better for Virgin America, but don’t let that fool you. This wasn’t a great quarter.

Virgin America Posts Low January Load Factors
Part 2 of my Virgin America review looks at the low load factors that plagued the airline in January.

Digging in to Virgin America’s Q4 Operational Stats
This is the last post on this for awhile, I promise. But I decided to dig in to operational stats and the results told some interesting tales.

Former America West Pilots Win in Court Ruling Over Legacy US Airways Pilots
We may be one step closer to seeing the US Airways/America West seniority problem solved, but not quite. The old US Airways pilots are going to appeal. *sigh*

Spirit Wants People To Know Who They Are
You know who Spirit is? If so, you might not like them. They’re trying to change that, but not by improving customer service. Just by talking.

A very strange thing happens when a commercial airplane crashes. All of a sudden every person related to this industry feels the need to write about it following the standard script.

1) Report that there was an accident
2) Offer “thoughts and prayers”
3) Link to one news story with details and air traffic control tapes if available

If you search around your favorite industry blogs and other news sources today, that’s what you’ll find. A quick Google search of “3407 thoughts prayers” comes back with more than 6,000 results so far. I’m pretty sure that there’s no other reason for that number (the flight number of the downed airplane) to be linked with “thoughts and prayers,” so this is all about the accident. (And yes, I realize that my blog will show up in that search now as well.)

So what’s my point? I’m not writing about it. I have absolutely nothing to add. Like most of you, I sat there glued to CNN with a sinking feeling in my stomach last night. Is there anything I can add? No. You all know that I don’t like to speculate on the cause of accidents, so I know pretty much what everyone else knows right now.

As soon as I think I can add some value to the conversation, I’ll do it. Until then, I’ll focus on other subjects where I hope I can add perspective. So if you don’t see me immediately comment on accidents in the future, it’s not because I don’t think it’s important, and it’s not because I don’t care. It’s simply because I don’t know how to add any value.