Obama Jet Makes Unscheduled Maintenance Stop at STL

[Matt Molnar]

Obama's (temporary) campaign jet, a Midwest MD-80, made an unscheduled landing in St. Louis today after the pilots experienced a problem with the pitch.

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- The airplane carrying Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made a safe, unscheduled and precautionary landing in St. Louis on Monday after a flight control problem arose en route from Chicago to Charlotte, N.C. [Full Story]

I presume they flew out of the way to STL because Midwest has MX staff there.

[MarkLawrence]

No - Midwest has no real presence at STL - maybe it was just the closest? But American has a very big presence at STL - maybe it was for their MD-80 expertise...

[Chris102]

I saw it on NBC News - he didn't fly back out on the MD-80. It looked like a Legacy 600 - it was gray with a red and black stripe. Anyone know what airline or charter owns it?

[moose135]

Obama's (temporary) campaign jet, a Midwest MD-80, made an unscheduled landing in St. Louis today after the pilots experienced a problem with the pitch.

Just saw a news report on this. From what they were saying, the evacuation slide in the tail cone inflated and was interfering with controls to the tail, prompting the crew to make the unscheduled landing.

[PhilDernerJr]

FYI, North American still has the Obama contract. The plane is just out of service while it's being reconfigured and painted. It'll be back soon.

[njgtr82]

The plane is just out of service while it's being reconfigured and painted. It'll be back soon.

Any sort of special colors or titles if your allowed to say?? Also I read ExpressJet chartered an E145 for him the rest of the trip.

[Matt Molnar]

Popular Mechanics:

Mechanic: Obama's Plane Could Have 'Lost Control' in Anomaly
When Barack Obama's plane encountered mechanical problems during a flight on Monday, was the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate in more danger than anyone let on, including his campaign staff, a major airline, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)—or the senator himself? "Everything seemed under control," Obama told reporters onboard his charter MD-80 after an unscheduled touchdown. "The pilots knew what they were doing."

But even as the head of the NTSB called the agency's investigation of the incident "extremely serious," a veteran MD-80 flight mechanic described the onboard irregularity to PopularMechanics.com as potentially "extremely dangerous."

...

However, according to a mechanic familiar with MD-80 aircraft, inadvertent deployment of the slide could have put the airplane at serious risk. Mike Hatfield, an American Airlines mechanic who has worked on MD-80s for 20 years, called the slide's deployment "extremely dangerous" in an interview this afternoon with PM. "If it had caught on any of the control lines, they would have lost control of the aircraft," he said. [Full Story]

[Chris102]

FYI, North American still has the Obama contract. The plane is just out of service while it's being reconfigured and painted. It'll be back soon.

Sounds like good news :borat:
Hoping for campaign colors :D