e-Scapes

New photos and an update on the investigation into what caused Senator Barack Obama's plane to land unexpectedly earlier this week:

"Preliminary findings reveal that the slide was partially inflated and the inflation bottle was empty,” the National Transportation Safety Board said in a Thursday statement. “Examination of the hardware did not reveal any evidence of missing components, nor any evidence of tampering."

The safety agency released a photo of the Midwest Airlines MD-81 plane carrying the presumptive Democratic nominee and compared it to what that part of the plane should have looked like.

Here's a photo of the slide in Obama's plane.

And here's a photo of what it should have looked like during the flight.

NTSB said the slide and hardware have been taken from the plane for further examination, as have flight recorders. Although the flight crew said they detected stiffness in the controls after takeoff, the NTSB added that, "flight crew statements indicate that the crew did not hear the slide deploy in flight nor did a mechanic who was seated in the rear of the airplane."

-Kate Barrett