A death on Denver airport’s runway highlights the challenge of securing a facility twice the size of Manhattan

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By Zoe Sottile, CNN

(CNN) — Denver International Airport is conducting a safety analysis after a person who jumped over a fence into a runway was struck and killed by a plane during takeoff late Friday.

The fatal incident has drawn scrutiny to the airport’s security protocols – and highlighted the challenges of securing a facility twice the size of Manhattan.

The pedestrian, who has not been identified, was killed just two minutes after they jumped a perimeter fence and crossed a runway at the airport. The pilots of the Frontier Airlines Airbus, which was headed to Los Angeles, quickly aborted takeoff. Twelve people were injured during the incident.

Surveillance video taken before the collision shows a blurry figure – tiny in comparison to the jet and the expanse of land around them – standing on the runway.

Then the figure is overtaken by the plane, engulfed in flames.

“We’re stopping on the runway,” a pilot said, according to audio from ATC.com. “We just hit somebody. We have an engine fire.”

The airport said it would “perform an incident analysis and after action in the coming days which will include reviewing the ongoing investigation, including our perimeter security program.”

There are 36 miles of perimeter fence at the airport, according to its statement, and staff perform continuous inspections.

Denver International Airport is the nation’s third busiest by passengers, behind only Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth.

And it’s massive: At 53 square miles, the airport is larger than San Francisco, according to its website.

That makes securing its facilities a challenge, according to experts.

“The more expansive the land area of an airport, the more perimeter to defend, the more remote areas, and the more complex terrain, all of which provide more opportunities for unauthorized entry,” explained William Rankin, an adjunct professor at Florida Institute of Technology who researches airport management and safety.

Still, pedestrian incursions are extremely rare, Rankin said. Publicly available data shows there are just a handful of pedestrian incursions – between zero to five – each year on average, he said.

Fatal pedestrian-aircraft collisions like Friday night’s are even rarer, happening less than once per year on average, he said.

The incident “was an extremely rare event and should not make the public less confident in the security of the major US airports,” Rankin said.

Past security breaches

As rare as pedestrian incursions are, this isn’t the first time someone has breached a perimeter fence at the Denver airport.

Eight people – including both pedestrians and drivers – breached the fence between 2004 and 2015, an investigation by The Associated Press found.

At the time, an airport spokesperson said, “We believe many folks do not realize they are even on airport property — it looks like farmland and a breach may be miles and miles away from a runway or the terminal.”

The AP found 268 perimeter breaches across the country during the same period. They span from intentional stowaways to seemingly accidental trespassing. The Denver incidents included a drunk 28-year-old who drove through a perimeter fence and a man who climbed the fence and said he was on his way to work, according to the Denver Post.

FAA data shows there were 70 “vehicle/pedestrian deviations” at airports across the US in the first quarter of 2026.

Some breaches just cause embarrassment for airport management – like when a stranded jet skier swam to shore and climbed a fence at New York City’s JFK airport, bypassing a $100 million security system. He walked across at least one runway seemingly undetected.

But in other instances, people have been killed after airport security breaches.

In 2020, a man was struck and killed by a commercial jet landing at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas, according to the AP. The 22-year-old didn’t have a security badge and it was unclear how he got onto the runway.

A 30-year-old man ran onto the runway at Salt Lake City International Airport in 2023. He was found unconscious inside a Delta jet engine and died at the scene, prompting investigations from federal and local authorities.

Airport security challenges

The breaches underscore the difficulty of airport security. The FAA recommends security fencing “to slow the access of pedestrians and vehicles onto an airport” and federal regulations require airports install “safeguards to prevent inadvertent entry to the movement area by unauthorized persons or vehicles” to be certified.

Airport security fences can vary, at a minimum, from six to eight feet, depending on the specific plan approved by the Transportation Security Administration, according to Jeffrey Price, a professor of aviation at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. They must be chain link with barbed wire on top, he said.

Installing fences higher than the minimum requirement can quickly become expensive, Price said.

Many airports use surveillance cameras to monitor their perimeter fences. TSA doesn’t mandate airports use “perimeter intrusion detection systems,” which can detect someone trying to breach the fence, according to Price.

The Denver airport says it uses “a combination of technology” to inspect its perimeter fence.

Monitoring the airport’s 36 miles of perimeter fencing is nonetheless likely difficult. “Denver Airport is very large and it can be challenging to monitor all potential breaches of existing security perimeter systems,” Daniel Kwasi Adjekum, an adjunct professor of aviation at the University of North Dakota, told CNN.

Investigation will review safety processes

For airport authorities, the next stop is reviewing all of the safety procedures meant to prevent an incident like Friday night’s.

Adjekum said the airport’s incident analysis would likely involve a review of the airport’s internal safety processes – the systems that ensure security at the apron (where planes are parked, refueled, and loaded), taxiways, runways and other areas.

“They will review security perimeter fencing and other surveillance systems to prevent unauthorized access by people and itinerant wildlife, which can lead to runway and taxiway incursions,” he said.

“They will review emergency response capabilities and time for aircraft emergencies on the runway or taxiway,” he went on. “They will review their safety management systems (SMS) policies to determine emergent hazards and risks due to increased operational tempo, changes in seasons, wildlife and bird-strike hazards, and unauthorized entry by persons into restricted areas despite existing safety controls.”

Adjekum said it may have been close to impossible for the crew to see the person on the runway during takeoff.

The incident is “unfortunate and tragic,” he said.

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CNN’s Sneha Dhandapani, Martin Goillandeau, Karina Tsui, and David Williams contributed to this report.