Five of the injured passengers were taken to nearby hospitals, according to airport authorities. Their conditions were unclear.<\/p>\n
The Frontier Airlines flight was taking off for Los Angeles International Airport at around 23:00 local time (06:00 BST) when it hit the individual, authorities said. <\/p>\n
The unnamed individual had leapt over a perimeter fence two minutes before the impact, said the carrier.<\/p>\n
An air traffic controller had just told the Frontier pilot they were clear for takeoff and wished them a good night.<\/p>\n
After a short pause, the pilot called back to the tower, according to air traffic control audio.<\/p>\n
“We’re stopping on the runway,” the pilot tells the tower, adding that the plane just hit someone.<\/p>\n
“There was an individual walking across the runway, ” the pilot says. <\/p>\n
“We have 231 souls on board,” he adds, including seven crew members. <\/p>\n
The plane was moving at a “high speed” at the time, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. <\/p>\n
“Late last night, a trespasser breached airport security at Denver Int’l Airport, deliberately scaled a perimeter fence, and ran out onto a runway,” Duffy said in a statement. <\/p>\n
“No one should EVER trespass on an airport,” he added.<\/p>\n
Commercial airliners typically take off at speeds between 150 and 180mph (240\u2013290 km\/h).<\/p>\n
The trespasser is not believed to be an airport employee, Denver International Airport (DIA) said. <\/p>\n
“The airport has examined the fenceline and found it to be intact,” DIA said in a statement. <\/p>\n
Smoke in the cabin can be seen on photos and video shared by one of the passengers.<\/p>\n
Passenger Jose Cervantes told an affiliate of the BBC’s US partner CBS that he heard a thud and then “I just see the right wing just on fire and like, it’s exploding”.<\/p>\n
“I thought I was going to burn to death,” he added. “You know, when I just saw the fire and the smoke, I just thought I was going to burn.”<\/p>\n
After evacuating the plane, the passengers were bused back to the terminal as emergency crews responded to the scene, DIA said. <\/p>\n
The majority of the passengers have since left Denver on a new Frontier flight, the airport said. <\/p>\n
The runway was closed while the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board launched an investigation.<\/p>\n
“We are extremely saddened by this incident and express our sympathies to those involved,” DIA said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five of the injured passengers were taken to nearby hospitals, according to airport authorities. Their conditions were unclear.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":948948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-948947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116546332765521816","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/948948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}