00:01Denver Runway 17L. The pilots say four words into the radio.
00:06We just hit somebody. We have an engine fire.
00:09Then they report an engine fire.
00:11The aircraft is still decelerating on Runway 17L when smoke begins entering the cabin.
00:17It is 11.19 p.m. on May 8, 2026, and Frontier Airlines Flight 4345 is in its takeoff role
00:25at Denver International Airport, an Airbus A321.
00:31224 passengers, 7 crew, Los Angeles.
00:36The aircraft is accelerating through approximately 146 miles per hour when it makes contact with something on the runway.
00:43The pilots abort immediately.
00:45Someone has climbed the perimeter fence of Denver International Airport in the dark and walked out onto an active runway.
00:53Thermal footage released by local station KDVR shows the person scaling the barbed wire fence and walking directly into the
01:01path of the aircraft.
01:02From the moment they clear the fence to the moment of impact, two minutes.
01:08The person is at least partially consumed by the engine, causing a fire.
01:13Denver Fire Department responds and extinguishes it.
01:16Inside the cabin, passengers describe the moment of impact.
01:20A sound, then smoke, then a flight attendant telling them to evacuate.
01:25The emergency slides deploy.
01:27People land on the runway in the dark.
01:30Twelve passengers sustain minor injuries.
01:33Five are taken to hospital.
01:35The identity of the person on the runway has not been confirmed.
01:38Not an airport employee.
01:41The FAA and the NTSB have opened investigations.
01:46And look, bro, that person climbed the fence to get there, right?
01:50The next man?
01:51He had a job to do.
01:52And his colleagues killed him.
01:57Ravi Subramanian.
01:58It's December 16th, 2015.
02:02Mumbai.
02:03The pilots are running an hour late.
02:05The engines spool up before the ground crew is clear.
02:08And this guy over here?
02:11Ravi Subramanian.
02:12He's standing with his back to the intake,
02:15wearing headphones and obviously not hearing what's coming.
02:20Subramanian is an experienced Air India ground technician,
02:24supervising the crew preparing flight 619,
02:27an Airbus A319 bound for Hyderabad,
02:30from his position near the landing gear.
02:33In the cockpit, the captain and co-pilot are behind schedule
02:36and, in the words of the subsequent investigation,
02:40in a tearing hurry.
02:42They mistake a signal from the ground and power up the engines.
02:46Four personnel are still inside the ingestion radius.
02:50Three of them see it and get clear.
02:53Subramanian, facing the other way, headphones on, does not.
02:57The suction pulls him backward.
03:00Death is instantaneous.
03:03The physical damage is so severe that a standard post-mortem examination cannot be conducted.
03:09The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau places blame on the flight crew.
03:14Both pilots are arrested and charged with causing death by negligence.
03:18The finding is not that a system failed.
03:21It is that two men in a hurry started their engines while people were still in the zone
03:26they are trained, specifically and repeatedly, to clear.
03:32Kyler E. Finger
03:33The security footage runs for just under 30 minutes.
03:37At the start of it, Kyler E. Finger is trying locked doors.
03:41At the end of it, he is inside the engine cowling of a Delta aircraft,
03:46his dreadlocked hair pulled into the rotating fan blades,
03:49causing, well, you know.
03:52If police had found him 30 seconds earlier, he'd still be alive.
03:57It is New Year's Day 2024, and E. Finger is 30 years old,
04:03scheduled to fly from Salt Lake City to Denver to visit a sick grandfather.
04:08He has lived with bipolar disorder for a decade.
04:11At some point in the terminal, a manic episode takes hold.
04:15A store manager reports that he is behaving strangely,
04:18barefoot, shouting, demanding a refund for a jersey he just bought.
04:23Staff see him lying on his stomach on the handrail of a moving walkway.
04:28He tries locked gate door after locked gate door.
04:32At 9.52 p.m., he finds an emergency exit that opens.
04:37An alarm goes off.
04:38Police are dispatched.
04:41Dispatchers send them to gate A31.
04:44E. Finger exited near gate A4.
04:46The information is corrected to A22.
04:51That is also wrong.
04:54One officer on the radio describes the search as a wild goose chase.
04:58For the next 10 minutes, E. Finger is somewhere in the dark outside the terminal.
05:03He has no shoes.
05:05It is January in Utah.
05:08He walks nearly a mile to the area where aircraft are being de-iced.
05:12At 10.07 p.m., a Delta Airbus A220 finishes being de-iced and is given clearance to taxi.
05:20Its engines start.
05:22The pilot notices a figure running toward the aircraft and begins to brake.
05:27He cannot stop in time.
05:28E. Finger reaches the aircraft and climbs into the engine cowling.
05:33His dreadlocked hair is pulled into the rotating blades.
05:38The cause of death is blunt head trauma.
05:42Officers pull him from the cowling and attempt CPR.
05:45He is pronounced dead at the scene.
05:50Germani Thompson
05:52Belt loaders sit on every airport ramp, running constantly, so familiar to the people who work
05:57around them that they stop registering as machinery with moving parts.
06:01They are just the thing that moves the bags.
06:04It is around 10 p.m. on August 30, 2022, and Germani Thompson, 26 years old, is working
06:11a night shift at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, unloading bags from
06:16a Frontier Airlines aircraft.
06:18A hundred ordinary movements, the kind of shift that ends, for most people, with a drive home.
06:25Instead, her hair becomes caught in the belt loader's conveyor mechanism.
06:29The machine does not stop.
06:31It does not register the difference between a bag and a person.
06:35It keeps running at exactly the speed it always runs, doing what it is designed to do.
06:41Thompson is taken to hospital and pronounced dead.
06:44The specific injuries are not detailed in public reporting.
06:47What is documented is the mechanism, entanglement, and the machine's failure to stop.
06:54Gaylene McEwen.
06:56The signs are fixed to the fence in capital letters.
06:59Jet blasts of departing and arriving aircraft can cause severe physical harm, resulting in
07:05extreme bodily harm and slash or death.
07:09Gaylene McEwen can read them from where she is standing.
07:13So can everyone else holding the fence beside her.
07:16Maho Beach on St. Martin sits at the end of Runway 10 of Princess Juliana International Airport,
07:23separated from the airfield by a low fence and a narrow road.
07:27Tourists come specifically to hold that fence against the jet blast of departing planes.
07:32Yes, seriously.
07:34The TripAdvisor reviews mention the signs.
07:37They also mention that holding the fence is the whole point.
07:41It is around 6 p.m. on July 12, 2017.
07:46Gaylene McEwen is 57 years old, a hotel owner from New Zealand, on holiday with her husband
07:52and two friends.
07:54A Boeing 737 spools up to full thrust, brakes on before rolling.
07:59When it reaches full power, the blast hits the fence.
08:04The tourists around McEwen hold on.
08:06She holds on.
08:08Then her grip gives way.
08:11She is thrown backward across the road.
08:13The back of her head strikes a concrete block.
08:16She dies shortly after reaching hospital.
08:20It is the first documented death by jet blast at Maho Beach.
08:26Donovan Theater
08:27Donovan Theater is 19 years old and has been working at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport
08:33for one month.
08:34It is late in the evening of May 19, 2000.
08:39Theater and two co-workers are taking a load of late bags to Alaska Flight 191, waiting at
08:46the gate with 140 passengers and five crew aboard.
08:51The job is one he has done dozens of times in his four weeks on the ramp.
08:56Drive the cart to the aircraft, step off, open the cargo door, load the bags.
09:01He steps off the vehicle to open the cargo door.
09:05The cart moves forward.
09:07It pins him between the vehicle and the fuselage of the aircraft.
09:12The combined weight leaves no room for anything.
09:16Investigators later examine whether a bag slid from the seat and triggered the vehicle's movement
09:21or whether the parking brake was not fully set.
09:25Either way, the cart moves.
09:28He is between it and the plane, and there is nothing to absorb the impact.
09:33A flight attendant and the first officer on Alaska 191 hear the emergency below and come down
09:40immediately.
09:41They try to revive him on the tarmac.
09:44He dies on the way to Harborview Medical Center.
09:47He had been on the job for one month.
09:50He was 19.
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