A Philippine Airlines plane carrying 98 people Friday missed a runway, plowed into a concrete wall and bounced onto a highway, smashing into cars and killing at least eight people, officials said.
The eight victims were killed on the ground when the careening aircraft crushed cars on Manila's South Expressway, said officials at the airport clinic and two nearby hospitals.Airline spokesman Enrique Santos said 36 passengers and two other people were injured. He said some of the injured would have to be hospitalized.
Santos said the plane was arriving in Manila from Zamboanga City, 540 miles southeast of the capital, when it crashed at about 3:23 p.m. (1:23 a.m. MDT).
Air traffic controllers reported the plane's pilot as saying visibility was poor because of heavy rain, and that he could see only half the runway as he approached the airport on a flight from Zamboanga City, 540 miles southeast of Manila.
Witnesses said the aircraft overshot the runway, struck the ground and crashed through a concrete highway wall, bounced across the highway and came to a stop on some railroad tracks.
"We came down and went up again about 150 feet. Then we went down again very steeply," said passenger Beverly Spilman, a British teacher who works in Austria and is vacationing in the Philippines. "I did see we were nearing the end of the runway . . . then we hit the highway, plowed through a railroad track and landed on the opposite side of the highway."
Spilman, who spoke to reporters at the Manila airport clinic, suffered minor cuts. "The flight was smooth, but the landing was very, very rough," said David Tillson, 55, a tourist from Tacoma, Wash. "We landed, three, four, five, six times on the runway. We were actually bouncing."