Daily Mail|A plane full of senior Philippine officials who were part of Pope Francis’s entourage to the island veered off the runway as it prepared for take-off as storms lashed the region.
The jet carrying 11 people was due to leave Tacloban airport just minutes after the Pope’s plane left for Manila when its front tyres blew and overshot the track.
No one was hurt but authorities closed the airport as tropical storm Mekkhala hit the region, with wind gusts of up to 80mph.
However, the storm has already claimed one life after a 21-year-old volunteer was killed when a scaffolding holding huge speakers was blown over by the wind, Leyte health officials said.
The city of Tacloban, which was one of the worst affected areas by Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, welcomed the leader of the Catholic Church this morning.
At least 6,300 people were killed, a million were left homeless and four million were displaced after the devastating storm struck 14 months ago.
Since then, Pope Francis has vowed to visit the area and was today welcomed by hundreds of thousands of people, who lined the streets in ponchos.
‘I felt that I had to be here…I am here to be with you, perhaps a little late, I have to say, but I am here,’ he said.
The Pope, speaking through an interpreter who translated his comments into English from his native Spanish, said he ‘respected the feelings’ of those who felt they had been let down by God because of the disaster but implored them to move forward in their faith.
The front tyres of the plane blew during take-off and left the plane to overshot the runway at Tacloban airport.

A boy and a member of security person stand next to a piece of debris after the accident during storms
‘Many of you have asked the Lord, ‘Why?’ And to each of you the Lord is responding to your hearts from his heart … so many of you have lost everything. I don’t know what to say to you but the Lord does know what to say to you,’ he said.
Nearly 3,000 victims are buried in the city’s almost half-hectare mass grave site. Hundreds are still unaccounted for.
He asked the crowd to hold a moment of silence and thanked those who helped in the rescue effort after the worst recorded storm ever to make landfall.
Firefighters speed along the tarmac as they rush through puddles at the airport after the plane overshot the runway.
‘This is what comes from my heart and forgive me if I have no other words to express,’ Francis said.
But he had to cut his visit short after pilots of the Philippine Airlines jet told him the weather would worsen, adding: ‘We barely have time to get to the plane.’
‘I apologise to all of you,’ he said, speaking in Italian through a translator. ‘I am sad about this, truly saddened.’
Tomorrow, he is due to celebrate the final mass of the visit in Manila’s Rizal Park, where as many as six million people are expected.
St John Paul II drew a record five million people to his final mass in Manila in 1995, and organisers say they think Francis could top that record.