Majuro
\nPassengers were forced to swim for their lives on Friday when an airliner ditched into a lagoon after missing the runway on a remote Pacific island and began sinking.<\/p>\n
The Air Niugini Boeing 737-800 was attempting to land at Weno airport in Micronesia but ended up half submerged in Chuuk lagoon after the accident on Friday morning.
\nWithin minutes, locals scrambled a flotilla of small boats to pluck the 35 passengers and 12 crew from the water.<\/p>\n
The airline said the plane, which was involved in a collision with another aircraft earlier this year, had \u201clanded short of the runway\u201d.
\nRemarkably, it reported no serious injuries among those on the plane, which was making a scheduled stop on its way from the Micronesian capital Pohnpei to Port Moresby.<\/p>\n
Passenger Bill Jaynes, editor of the Pohnpei-based Kaselehlie Press newspaper, said he did not even realise there had been an accident until he saw water gushing into the fuselage.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was surreal,\u201d he told Bible Baptist Radio Chuuk shortly after being discharged from hospital with a gash on his forehead.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we landed hard until I looked over and saw a hole in the side of the plane and water coming in. I thought \u2018this is not the way it\u2019s supposed to happen\u2019.\u201d Jaynes praised the response of the locals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey immediately starting coming out in boats. They were awesome and I was really impressed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It is surrounded on three sides by water. The Chuuk lagoon was a famous World War II battle site and dozens of Japanese vessels and planes are on the lagoon floor, now a tourist attraction for scuba divers.<\/p>\n
It is not the first time a plane has overshot the runway in Micronesia.<\/p>\n
In 2008, an Asia Pacific Airlines cargo Boeing 727 overran and ended up with its nose landing gear in the lagoon at the end of the Pohnpei airport runway.<\/p>\n
Papua New Guinea\u2019s Accident Investigation Commission (AIC) said it was preparing to send investigators to Weno.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Majuro Passengers were forced to swim for their lives on Friday when an airliner ditched into a lagoon after missing the runway on a remote Pacific island and began sinking. The Air Niugini Boeing 737-800 was attempting to land at Weno airport in Micronesia but ended up half submerged in Chuuk lagoon after the accident […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43283,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43284,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43282\/revisions\/43284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}