In a shocking incident taking less than three minutes, a security breach at one of the nation’s busiest airports led to an intruder stepping directly into the path of a speeding airplane on a Colorado runway, with 231 individuals on board.
The 41-year-old man managed to bypass unnoticed motion detectors in a secluded area of Denver International Airport, a sprawling facility covering an area twice the size of Manhattan on the open plains.
He swiftly scaled an eight-foot fence topped with barbed wire and walked onto the runway unobstructed, where he was tragically struck by a Frontier Airlines jet attempting to take off late Friday night.
Surveillance footage captured the man being pulled into an aircraft engine, which erupted into flames upon impact, prompting the pilot to abort the takeoff and evacuate all 224 passengers and seven crew members. Twelve individuals sustained minor injuries during the evacuation.
Experts in aviation and risk assessment have described the incident on the Denver runway as a significant security lapse. They pointed out that the situation could have been catastrophic if the pilot had not managed to safely halt the aircraft, which was moving at a speed of 150 miles per hour (241 kph).
“This incident should raise alarms. It was an unprecedented risk, but now a precedent has been set,” said Eric Chaffee, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, who specializes in risk management within the aviation industry.
“The individual ended up with a bad result. But having somebody basically damage a plane is really quite concerning because of all those lives aboard any given aircraft,” Chaffee added.
“There ought to be new measures put into place to prevent this type of tragedy.”
15 seconds to scale the fence
Some aviation experts disagreed that new regulations were needed. They said installing blanket surveillance or impregnable defenses around airports was cost-prohibitive, given the relative rarity of dangerous events like Friday’s collision.
The Denver medical examiner ruled the intruder’s death a suicide.
Officials from the city-owned airport promised a review of their protocols defended their perimeter security program.
During a Tuesday press conference Denver airport CEO Phillip Washington said the airport received “perfect scores” following federal inspections of airfield safety and perimeter integrity.
Airport officials said in response to questions from The Associated Press that annual inspections by the Federal Aviation Administration found two discrepancies over the past decade, both from 2019.
One was a response vehicle that got delayed 20 seconds during an aircraft rescue firefighting drill, and the other was a problem with driver training records.
The airport did not answer questions about inspections of the perimeter fence and whether any problems have been found. Those fences are under oversight from a separate federal agency, the Transportation Security Administration.
The FAA referred questions about the perimeter security to TSA. The AP sent emails to TSA seeking comment on Denver’s inspection results and documents detailing its security protocols.
“Safety is something we take very, very seriously,” Washington told reporters Tuesday.
He added that making the perimeter fence taller or topping it with razor wire wouldn’t necessarily have made a difference, because someone who was motivated could still find a way in.
During Friday’s breach, an alarm from a ground detection sensor was triggered shortly before the intruder entered the airport along its eastern boundary, about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from the terminal.
An airport worker watching video surveillance cameras attributed the alarm to a herd of deer — and missed the intruder.
It took the man about 15 seconds to scale the fence and two minutes more to reach the runway, Washington said. Airport officials didn’t know he was on the runway until the pilot notified the control tower that the plane hit somebody.
Airport perimeter breaches are a regular problem, with perhaps dozens annually nationwide, said security expert Jeff Price, who managed security at the Denver airport in the 1990s.
Denver International Airport is surrounded by about 36 miles (58 kilometers) of fence, which officials say is patrolled by security workers and continuously inspected.
The vast majority of airport trespassers don’t pose a real threat to others, according to Price and other experts.
A man died at the Austin airport in 2020 after a Southwest Airlines jet struck him on a runway. Police later ruled it was a suicide.
Worries about copycats
Two law firms notified Denver officials Tuesday that they intend to sue on behalf of the Frontier passengers, seeking in excess of $10 million in damages. The firms alleged “multiple failures” in the airport perimeter security system, but did not provide specifics.
Steven Wallace, former director of accidents investigations at the Federal Aviation Administration, described the Denver fatality as a “one-off event” that would not justify costly improvements to airport perimeter security programs nationwide.
Wallace acknowledged that some perimeter fences can easily be breached. There are no set rules for their construction, and their primary role is to keep out wildlife that could interfere with flight operations, he said.
“I just don’t see how you’re going to think of and deal with every possible way a human could get into an airport,” he said.
Jim Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, suggested there is now a higher likelihood for a repeat of Friday’s collision given the potential for copycats. Hall said Denver should consider adding more personnel and surveillance to properly monitor its fence.
“With the amount of cameras and technology that is available, they need to address the problem,” he said. “They’ve had a failure and they don’t need to have another one.”
