A plane struck and killed a person at Denver International Airport just hours after President Trump’s transportation secretary revealed he’d been filming a family road trip for months while also ostensibly working to ensure travel safety.
The airport said the person had trespassed onto the runway just two minutes before he was fatally struck by the Frontier Airlines flight. An official told ABC News he was consumed by one of the engines.
“Tower, Frontier 4345, we’re stopping on the runway. Uh, we just hit somebody… we have an engine fire,” air traffic control audio captured the pilot saying. “I do have limbs on the runway. ... There appear to be human remains on the runway.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who sparked a wave of criticism Friday by appearing on Fox News to promote a new reality TV series he’d filmed with his family, issued a statement early Saturday confirming the deadly runway incident.
This is why, he said, “No one should EVER trespass on an airport.”
“Late last night, a trespasser breached airport security at Denver Int’l Airport, deliberately scaled a perimeter fence, and ran out onto a runway,” Duffy wrote.
“The trespasser on the runway was then struck by Frontier Airlines Flight 4345 during takeoff at high speed. The pilot stopped takeoff procedures immediately,” he wrote, adding that 12 people were hurt and 5 were taken to the hospital.
The Denver accident came a day after a Delta Air Lines employee died after an airport tug crashed into a jet bridge at the Orlando International Airport. The DOT said no aircraft were involved in the fatal incident. Likewise, the Denver accident did not involve any DOT assets.
The horrific accidents come as Duffy faces scrutiny over the vacation he took with his large family to film a road-trip reality series he said is meant to “celebrate America’s 250th birthday.”
Duffy, a former reality TV star turned Trump Cabinet official, announced Friday that he spent over half the year filming for The Great American Road Trip.
The forthcoming documentary will feature himself, his wife, Fox News weekend host Rachel Campos-Duffy, and two of their nine children.
The DOT has asserted that Duffy’s seven-month filming stint was done “in small, one-day or two stops,” and that “production costs were paid for by the Great American Road Trip, Inc., not taxpayers.”
But the Duffys’ road-trip movie has come under fire for touting carefree travel adventures that most ordinary Americans can’t manage amid rising costs and soaring gas prices caused by the war in Iran. The Frontier Airlines crash has also renewed concerns over the string of aviation accidents that have happened on Duffy’s watch.
His time heading the DOT started with a series of plane crashes, including the collision of an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter above Washington, D.C.’s Reagan National Airport, which killed 67 people aboard both aircraft. The Trump administration tried to blame the fatal accident on Biden-era diversity initiatives.
Multiple planes have collided or had a near miss, including a deadly collision at LaGuardia Airport last month between a plane and a truck, and near misses at Chicago Midway and Burbank Airport.
While promoting his new family film Friday, Duffy said he was able to do “some work” while traveling.
“We just kind of found these moments where I might be able to do some work, I could take the kids with me, do a road trip,” he said.
