Commercial operations have resumed at the Dipolog Airport, nine hours after it was ordered closed to give way to the repair of a Cebu Pacific aircraft that encountered technical problems upon landing at the airport runway on Wednesday.
Authorities said the facility resumed its services at 9:30 p.m. after they declared the runway was usable and safe for aircraft flight operations.
Cebu Pacific Air management reiterated this in a statement, saying the airport in Zamboanga del Norte’s capital was “back to normal operations.”
On Thursday, the airline mounted additional flights to accommodate passengers affected by the three canceled flights to and from Cebu and Manila. All passengers were given free travel vouchers to compensate for the inconvenience.
The plane from Cebu, Flight DG 6603 operated by CEB’s sister airline CebGo, was left in the middle of the runway after experiencing technical problems upon landing around 12:15 p.m.
“Everything went well when we left Cebu, but as we touched down, we noticed that the plane zigzagged and then we stopped. The crew apologized for the inconvenience and explained to us that they’re having some technical problem,” Polanco Mayor Evan Hope Olvis, whose town has jurisdiction over the airport, said over ABS-CBN News.
The plane stalled at the runway and the 60 passengers were asked to deplane and walk for about a kilometer to the arrival area.
CEB officials said the plane pilots detected unusual vibrations from the nose landing gear of the aircraft during the landing roll out.
The closure of the airport resulted in the cancellation of three flights of CEB and CebGo to and from Dipolog “• 5J 703 (Manila-Dipolog), 5J 704 (Dipolog-Manila) and DG 6604 (Dipolog-Cebu).
The airline apologized for the inconvenience the incident has caused.