Southwest Airlines Hole in Airplane Forces Emergency Landing [Photo]

A hole in a Southwest Airlines' Flight 2294 -- apparently the size of a football -- caused the passenger jet, headed for Baltimore, Maryland, to make an emergency landing in West Virginia just under an hour after it left Nashville, Tennessee.

Just to clarify: this was a freaking FOOTBALL SIZED HOLE (you can see in the picture above, via Airline Biz at the DMN, who scored it from a passenger on the plane) in the freaking fuselage of the freaking airplane where the freaking passengers sit. Or, less dramatically:

"Nothing like this has ever happened before," airline spokeswoman Marilee McInnis said.

Okay, maybe that wasn't so much less dramatic, but still: you get what's going on here, right? In the middle of a flight, a big chunk of the airplane (I consider "big chunk" to equal "anything that causes the cabin to lose pressure immediately and require an emergency landing") ripped off.

Now, I won't go all Joe Biden on you and tell you not to think about traveling -- Southwest is always diligent with their customer service and remains one of my favorite airlines -- but I would caution against willy-nilly hopping aboard any of their 300 series 737's, which is what Flight 2294 was. At least until they go back through and inspect them all (which, apparently, they are going to do).