TWO planes made emergency landings in John F. Kennedy International Airport and Vancouver within a 24-hour span while in Japan, a Vietnam airliner caught fire.

These three incidents come just days after a Qantas plane made an emergency descent and landing in the Philippine capital on Friday with 365 passengers and crew onboard.

Plane with blown tyre lands at NYC airport

In New York, a Delta Air Lines plane carrying 167 people safely made an emergency landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Tuesday evening, hours after it blew out a tyre on takeoff from the airport, authorities said.

Flight 141, which was bound for Salt Lake City, circled Kennedy for several hours to burn off fuel, then dumped extra fuel over a nearby body of water before landing, said Mr Alan Hicks, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees the airport in the New York City borough of Queens.

Passengers were taken by bus back to a terminal.

A spokesman for Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines said there were no injuries. She said maintenance workers would inspect the plane, a Boeing 737-800, and passengers would be rebooked on other flights.

She said the tyres are checked regularly but she did not know when they were last replaced.

Cathay Pacific jet makes emergency landing in Canada

In Montreal, a Boeing 747 belonging to Cathay Pacific Airline with 380 people aboard made an emergency landing without incident in Vancouver, in far western Canada, an airline spokesman said on Tuesday.

There were no injuries when the flight, which originated in New York and was heading to Hong Kong via Vancouver, landed in the western Canadian city at 3.36am (6.26pm Singapore time), said airline spokesman Jennifer Pearson.

'We understood there was a panel that has sustained some damage,' Ms Pearson said. 'It was on the approach to Vancouver that it was determined there was something.'

Ms Pearson said the aircraft landed safely and that the passengers and crew were never in danger.

'A review of the cause is currently underway,' she said.

The airplane was carrying 363 passengers and 17 crew members.

Fire breaks out on Vietnam airliner in Japan

A fire broke out Wednesday from the engine of a Vietnam Airlines passenger plane after it landed in Japan, but no one was injured, the transport ministry said.

An air traffic controller detected smoke coming out of the right engine of the Boeing-777 at 7.41am (6.41am) as it landed on the runway of Narita airport near Tokyo, transport ministry spokesman Fumio Shishiro said.

The plane, which had arrived from Ho Chi Minh City, taxied to the terminal and let off its passengers, after which plumes of white smoke billowed out of the engine, television footage showed.

Around an hour after the passengers had exited, a fire broke out but it was doused by firefighters who were on standby, he said.

'There was a slight smell as if the engine was burning,' a male passenger told NHK television.

Police were investigating the cause of the fire, Mr Shishiro said.

None of the 264 passengers and 13 crew members on the flight were injured, the official said. Airport officials closed a part of the runway but reopened it later, he said. -- REUTERS, AP, AFP