Taiwan jet in emergency landing

The jet was on its way from Taipei to Nagoya when its pilots requested a landing at Kansai, in western Japan.

There were no reports of injuries to passengers or crew.

The incident comes two days after a China Airlines plane exploded in a fireball shortly after landing on Japan's southern island of Okinawa.

A spokesman for China Airlines, Johnson Sun, told the BBC News website that the main reason the plane had to make an unscheduled stop at Kansai airport was that it had been told that the runway at Nagoya had been closed.

He said the plane waited until the pilots were told that the runway was open and then continued on to Nagoya.

Earlier reports said the plane had been forced to land because it had run out of fuel.

In Monday's incident at Naha airport all 165 people on board survived, with some escaping just seconds before the plane exploded.

Aviation officials from the US and Taiwan have been examining the wreckage for clues as to why the plane burst into flames, and are reported to be focusing on the possibility of a fuel leak from one of the engines.