Michael Casey
A person who jumped a fence and was on a runway at Denver International Airport was struck and killed by a Frontier Airlines plane during take-off, airport authorities say. The collision sparked an engine fire and forced passengers to evacuate.
The plane, en route from Denver to Los Angeles International Airport, “reported striking a pedestrian during take-off at DEN at approximately 11.19pm on Friday”, according to a post on the airport’s official X account.
A spokesperson for the airport said the person, who jumped a perimeter fence, had died. They said the unidentified person had been hit two minutes after entering the airport. The person is not believed to be an airport employee.
“We’re stopping on the runway,” the pilot tells the control tower, according to the site, ATC.com. “We just hit somebody. We have an engine fire.”
The pilot tells the air traffic controller they have “231 souls” on board and that an “individual was walking across the runway”.
The air traffic controller responds that they are “rolling the trucks now” before the pilot tells the tower they “have smoke in the aircraft. We are going to evacuate on the runway”.
Frontier Airlines said in a statement that Flight 4345 was involved in the collision and that “smoke was reported in the cabin and the pilots aborted take-off”. It was not clear whether the smoke was linked to the collision.
The airline said the plane, an Airbus A321, was carrying 224 passengers and seven crew members.
“We are investigating this incident and gathering more information in co-ordination with the airport and other safety authorities,” the airline said.
Passengers were evacuated via slides, and the emergency crew bussed them to the terminal. The airport spokesperson said 12 passengers had suffered minor injuries and five were taken to hospitals.
One passenger, Jacob Athens, posted a video showing people sliding down with their backpacks. He also posted photos of what appeared to be a damaged engine.
“As we were lifting off, the engine of the plane exploded. There was so much smoke we couldn’t even see one foot in front of us,” Athens said on his Facebook page, adding that passengers had to wait for over an hour on the runway and “still no transport or help with the cold”.
Another video showed passengers calmly walking down the plane’s aisle and using the slide to evacuate. They were told to step away from the plane.
Denver Airport said the National Transportation Safety Board had been notified and that runway 17L, where the incident occurred, had been closed during the investigation. It reopened on Saturday morning.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post on X that the person “breached airport security at Denver Int’l Airport, deliberately scaled a perimeter fence, and ran out onto a runway”.
He added: “No one should EVER trespass on an airport.”
The incident came a day after a Delta Air Lines employee was killed while on the job at the Orlando International Airport. In a statement, the airline said the employee died on Thursday night without providing details of the incident or the name of the employee.
“We are focused on extending our full support to family and taking care of our Orlando team during this difficult time,” the airline said. “We are working with local authorities as a full investigation gets under way to determine what occurred.”
AP
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