(Washington) An individual who crossed the security perimeter at Denver International Airport in the United States died after being struck by a plane preparing to take off, the airport said on Saturday.
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“The pedestrian crossed the perimeter fence and was struck just two minutes later while crossing the track. The pedestrian is dead, he is not an airport employee and his identity has not yet been established,” the airport said in a statement.
The accident involved a Frontier airline plane and took place around 11:19 p.m. local time (1:19 a.m. Eastern time) on Friday.
Among the passengers on the flight in question, “twelve people reported minor injuries and five of them were transported to local hospitals,” the airport said.
The American Secretary of Transport, Sean Duffy, indicated that an investigation had been opened to shed light on this accident which raises safety questions.
“No one should EVER enter an airport without authorization,” he recalled in a message on the social network X.
An audio recording published earlier on the specialist site ATC.com showed the exchange between a pilot and the site’s air traffic controllers: “We stop on the runway, we just hit someone, we have a fire in an engine… There was a person crossing the runway.” “.
According to a statement from Frontier Airlines sent to media outlets including CNN, “smoke was reported in the cabin and the pilots aborted takeoff. The passengers were then safely evacuated down the slides as a precautionary measure.”
The plane, an Airbus A321, had 224 passengers and seven crew members, according to Frontier.
