A Frontier Airlines plane struck and killed a person on the runway as it was taking off from Denver International Airport late Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The pilots aborted the takeoff, and the plane was evacuated after reporting an engine fire.
The Airbus A321 jet, with 224 passengers and seven crew members, was leaving on Flight 4345 to Los Angeles International Airport when the collision took place, according to statements from Frontier and the F.A.A.
Smoke was reported from inside the plane and the passengers were safely evacuated using emergency slides as a precaution, Frontier said.
The F.A.A. said in a statement on Saturday morning that the plane “struck a person on Runway 17L” as it was taking off and that the agency was investigating.
Denver Airport, also in a statement on Saturday morning, said that the person who was killed had jumped the airport’s perimeter fence and was hit just minutes later while crossing a runway. That person, who has not been identified, is not believed to be an employee of the airport, the statement added.
The airport examined its fence line after the incident and found it to be intact, the airport said.
Sean Duffy, the U.S. secretary of transportation, described the person killed as a trespasser who “breached airport security at Denver Int’l Airport, deliberately scaled a perimeter fence, and ran out onto a runway.”
A recording posted by the ATC.com app, which relays air traffic radio, captured the pilots describing the incident. “We’re stopping on the runway,” a pilot told the air traffic control tower. “We just hit somebody. We have an engine fire.” Later, a pilot told the tower that “an individual was walking across the runway.”
The crew told air traffic control that it was evacuating the plane on the runway because of the smoke inside.
Denver Airport said in a statement that the episode happened at about 11:20 p.m. and that firefighters had put out an engine fire on the plane. The passengers were taken back to the terminal by bus, it added. The airport said that 12 people reported minor injuries and five were taken to nearby hospitals.
The plane came to a sudden stop on the runway soon after it started accelerating for takeoff, according to a data replay from the tracking website Flightradar24.
Frontier’s headquarters are in Denver. The airline and the airport both said that investigations were underway. The airport said the National Transportation Safety Board had been notified.
In a statement, the N.T.S.B. said that it was working to gather information alongside the F.A.A. and local agencies.
Denver Airport did not report major disruptions to flight operations. Runway 17L, which was closed after the collision, is one of six runways at the airport.
