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(Update) PAL plane overshoots Tacloban runway


A Philippine Airlines plane with 119 people onboard overshot Thursday the runway at Tacloban City in Leyte, narrowly missing over 100 shanties near the airport, GMANews.TV learned. No one was reported hurt in the incident. The PAL Airbus 320 would have plowed into the shanties had it not been for a canal about 100 meters away. Authorities are now assisting the 113 passengers and six crew members who were onboard PAL flight PR-191. "Everybody's safe, we're just trying to extract the aircraft ... We're still investigating what happened," PAL spokesman Rolando Estabillo said in Filipino during an interview on dzBB radio. He said the plane overshot the runway and stalled after experiencing problems with one of the wheels in its nose landing gear. Estabillo said the nose wheel was still being extracted from the main runway, more than an hour after the accident. Citing initial reports, he said the plane already landed when it overshot the main runway. He said the passengers had already disembarked from the plane. Estabillo added that the plane will not be able to make its return flight on time. He said PAL may have to look for another plane to replace it on its next scheduled flight. This was the second time a PAL plan overshot the Tacloban runway, with the first incident happening in the 1990s. Last Tuesday, dzBB radio reported that a male passenger was able to board a Cebu Pacific flight from Manila to Dumaguete City without a ticket. He used the ticket of his brother to secure a boarding pass. The pilot steered the plane back to Manila upon learning of the "extra" passenger." In Cebu last February 7, a small Islander plane crashlanded some 200 meters away from the shores of the plush Plantation Bay resort. All passengers and crew were safe. - GMANews.TV
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