Final Destination: Frontier Plane Swallows Person Into Jet Engine

Frontier Airlines just lived through the kind of nightmare scenario people joke about after watching Final Destination, except this one is real.

A Frontier flight headed from Denver to Los Angeles reportedly struck and killed a person who somehow made it onto the runway during takeoff Friday night at Denver International Airport. This happened after 11 pm. Why was he even out there?

According to officials, Frontier Flight 4345 was accelerating for departure around 11:19 p.m. local time when the crew realized they had hit someone on the runway. The person’s body was yanked into one of the aircraft’s engines, igniting a fire. He was swallowed and partially consumed!

Here is the moment it happened:

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That is the kind of sentence nobody expects to hear unless you are interested in horror movies.

Air traffic control audio captured the stunned pilot telling the tower, “We just hit somebody… we have an engine fire.” Moments later, the crew evacuated the plane after smoke was detected onboard.

The Airbus A321 carried 224 passengers and seven crew members. Emergency slides (the bubble types) were deployed and passengers were transported back to terminals by bus while firefighters extinguished the engine fire. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffylater said 12 people suffered injuries during the evacuation process, with five transported to hospitals. This is insane. Again, what was the person doing there?

Authorities say the victim was not an airport employee and had allegedly breached airport security by scaling a perimeter fence before running onto the runway. Investigators seek to know how the person gained access to such a restricted area in the first place.

Frontier released a statement saying the airline was “deeply saddened by this event” and confirmed it is cooperating with investigators.

Meanwhile, airport officials reportedly inspected perimeter fencing Saturday morning searching for vulnerabilities or openings that may have allowed the person onto the airfield.

Final Destination is a movie but this – like so much – feels like we are living the movie now.