Continental flight forced to return to Tocumen airport

A Continental Airlines plane taking off from Panama for the US on Friday was forced  to  perform emergency safety checks and return to Tocumen airport.

According a statement by the Civil Aviation Authority a bird "apparently" hit one of the turbines, and  the pilot of the aircraft proceded to conduct an alert systems check of the Boeing 737-900 and notified the control tower of the incident.The pilots of the aircraft followed "all security procedures" for "a safe landing" on track three of the airport, where after extinguishing the fire " a review of the turbines on could be carried out." . The passengers, all unharmed, were evacuated from the plane while arrangements were made for them to catch other flights.

 During the incident the operations of the Tocumen International Airport is were not disrupted and air traffic continued normally.