Woman Taken by Police After Security Check Halts Manila-Davao Flight

By Miko Santos

MANILA — A predawn Cebu Pacific flight to Davao was held for more than 90 minutes Saturday after airport police boarded the aircraft with a sniffer dog, ordered all passengers off the plane and escorted a woman to a waiting police vehicle at Ninoy Aquino International Airport, according to a passenger aboard the flight.

Flight 5J 965, scheduled to leave Manila for Davao at 4:20 a.m. from Terminal 3, did not depart on time. Officers from the airport police and the Philippine National Police Aviation Security Group boarded with a K9 unit and searched the cabin while the plane remained at the gate, the passenger said.

Passengers were ordered off the aircraft at about 5:18 a.m. as the search continued. At roughly 5:57 a.m., aviation security personnel escorted a woman and her luggage across a rain-soaked tarmac to a marked police vehicle, which then drove away. Boarding resumed at about 6 a.m.

As of press time, neither Cebu Pacific nor Philippine aviation authorities had commented. The reason for the operation has not been confirmed, and no charges against the woman have been announced. She has not been publicly identified.

**A long wait before dawn**

For passengers on 5J 965, the disruption began before sunrise on one of the country’s busiest domestic routes. The flight, operated by the Philippines’ largest budget carrier, was due to depart in the predawn hours, a common schedule on the heavily travelled Manila-Davao corridor.

What started as routine boarding stalled when crew and ground staff described a “security issue,” the passenger said. Police and aviation security officers then moved through the cabin, with several officers and a detection dog focusing on one section of the plane.

The decision to remove all passengers signalled the seriousness of the response. Offloading an entire aircraft is a step airlines and security agencies generally reserve for a thorough cabin search or the removal of a specific person, though authorities did not confirm which applied.

Outside, on a tarmac slick with morning rain, the response was visible from the gate. A police vehicle marked “PULISYA,” bearing the unit number 550, was parked near the aircraft with its emergency lights on. Officers in high-visibility vests stood nearby. A woman was seen being escorted toward the vehicle with several pieces of luggage, including a large case and a small pink suitcase. She was driven away for what the passenger said authorities described as further questioning.

No information has been released about the nature of any suspected offense. The presence of police at an aircraft does not by itself indicate wrongdoing, and security responses can stem from a range of causes, including alerts that require verification, documentation problems or precautionary checks.

**The security unit’s role**

The Aviation Security Group is the Philippine National Police unit responsible for safety and security at the country’s airports, including screening, patrols and incident response at NAIA, the nation’s main gateway. It works alongside the Office of Transportation Security and airport operators in handling incidents in terminals and on the airfield.

Terminal 3, where the flight was based, serves a large share of Cebu Pacific’s domestic and international operations. The airport handles tens of millions of passengers a year and has been the focus of sustained efforts to modernize facilities and tighten screening.

Cebu Pacific, a unit of JG Summit Holdings, operates an extensive domestic network connecting Manila to destinations across the archipelago, with Davao among its key southern hubs. The airline has faced a difficult operating environment in 2026, including route suspensions and frequency cuts on some services, though those changes are unrelated to security operations of the kind seen Saturday.

**Passengers left in the dark**

For travelers caught in the delay, the episode meant an anxious wait of more than an hour and a half with little information. Such delays can ripple through the day’s schedule, affecting connecting flights and the airline’s later rotations, particularly on a high-frequency route.

By about 6 a.m., with the woman removed and the cabin search apparently finished, passengers were allowed to reboard. It remained unclear when the flight would depart for Davao or whether the route’s schedule would be further affected.

**Questions awaiting answers**

Key questions remain unanswered. Authorities have not said what triggered the search, why the aircraft was fully offloaded or the grounds on which the woman was taken from the scene. Whether she is regarded as a suspect, a witness or in some other capacity has not been disclosed.

Requests for comment have been directed to Cebu Pacific and to Philippine transportation and aviation security authorities. An official account is expected to clarify the sequence of events and the basis for the operation.

Until then, the account rests largely on what passengers observed: a flight held at the gate, officers and a dog working through the cabin, a full evacuation and a woman escorted into a police vehicle on a wet Manila tarmac as other travelers waited to resume their journey south.

*This is a developing story and will be updated.*