DENVER\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A Frontier Airlines plane bound for Los Angeles hit and killed a pedestrian on the runway of Denver International Airport during takeoff, airport authorities said, sparking an engine fire and forcing passengers to evacuate. <\/p>\n
The plane, en route to Los Angeles International Airport, \u201creported striking a pedestrian during takeoff at DEN at approximately 11:19 p.m. on Friday,\u201d the airport\u2019s official X account wrote.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the airport said the pedestrian, who jumped a perimeter fence, has died. They said the unidentified person was hit two minutes after entering the airport grounds. The person is not believed to be an airport employee.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re stopping on the runway,\u201d the pilot tells the control tower according to the site ATC.com. \u201cWe just hit somebody. We have an engine fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pilot tells the air traffic controller they have \u201c231 souls\u201d on board and that an \u201cindividual was walking across the runway.\u201d<\/p>\n
The air traffic controller responds that the airport is \u201crolling the trucks now\u201d before the pilot tells the tower that \u201c[we] have smoke in the aircraft. We are going to evacuate on the runway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frontier Airlines said in a statement that Flight 4345 was the one involved and that \u201csmoke was reported in the cabin and the pilots aborted takeoff.\u201d It was not clear whether the smoke was linked to the crash with the pedestrian.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Airbus A321 was carrying 224 passengers and seven crew members,\u201d the airline said. \u201cWe are investigating this incident and gathering more information in coordination with the airport and other safety authorities.\u201d <\/p>\n
Passengers were then evacuated via slides and the emergency crew bused them to the terminal. The airport spokesperson said 12 passengers suffered minor injuries and five were taken to hospitals. <\/p>\n
Denver airport said the National Transportation Safety Board had been notified and that runway 17L, where the incident took place, would remain closed while an investigation is conducted. It was expected to open later Saturday.<\/p>\n
The pedestrian death came a day after a Delta Air Lines employee was killed while on the job at the Orlando International Airport in Florida. In a statement, the airline said the employee was killed Thursday night without providing details of the incident nor the name of the employee.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are focused on extending our full support to family and taking care of our Orlando team during this difficult time,\u201d the airline said. \u201cWe are working with local authorities as a full investigation gets underway to determine what occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DENVER\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A Frontier Airlines plane bound for Los Angeles hit and killed a pedestrian on the runway of Denver…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":784564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[53501,112107,320887,1582,276,148911,288743,8141,320888,2961,224,5337,53504,33656,57315,12271,23492,27184,11004,114734],"class_list":{"0":"post-784563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-airline","9":"tag-airport-authority","10":"tag-airport-employee","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-california","13":"tag-denver-international-airport","14":"tag-engine-fire","15":"tag-incident","16":"tag-l-a-bound-plane","17":"tag-la","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-losangeles","20":"tag-passenger","21":"tag-pedestrian","22":"tag-pilot","23":"tag-runway","24":"tag-smoke","25":"tag-spokesperson","26":"tag-statement","27":"tag-takeoff"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116545452251270426","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}