An air traffic control audio recording has captured the horrifying moment that a Frontier Airlines plane fatally struck a person who breached a perimeter fence at Denver International Airport Friday night.
“We’re stopping on the runway. Uh, we just hit somebody… we have an engine fire,” the pilot of Frontier Flight 4345 said in the recording, released by ATC.com.
About 40 seconds later, the pilot reported smoke in the aircraft and said they would evacuate passengers onto the runway, which was carried out successfully using an inflatable slide.
Photos from the scene appeared to show blood on the plane’s engine.
The Airbus A321 was departing Denver, Colorado, for Los Angeles, California, with 224 passengers and seven crew members onboard, Frontier said in a statement. During the evacuation, 12 people reported minor injuries, and five were taken to local hospitals, airport officials confirmed to The Independent.
Runway 17L was closed early Saturday morning but later reopened around 10:55 a.m. Officials said the person who died was struck while crossing the runway about two minutes after jumping the fence. An inspection of the fence found it was intact.
The person, who has not yet been identified, is not believed to be an airport employee. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy described the individual as a “trespasser.”
“No one should EVER trespass on an airport,” Duffy wrote Saturday on X.
Earlier Saturday, Frontier told The Independent: “We are deeply saddened by this event.”
The incident follows a separate safety scare involving Frontier about a month earlier, when one of its jets narrowly avoided colliding with two trucks that crossed in front of it on a taxiway at Los Angeles International Airport. The plane was moving slowly at the time when the driver had to suddenly brake to avoid impact.
During communications with air traffic control, the pilot expressed alarm and used an expletive, reporting that he had to slam on the brakes to prevent a collision.
“It happened so fast,” the pilot said in audio posted by ATC.com. “I have to go check on the flight attendants in the back. It was real close, closest I’ve ever seen.”
No one was injured in the LAX incident.
