On Friday night, a Frontier Airlines flight hit somebody crossing the runway as it was on its way to take off from Denver.
The plane’s engine caught fire. Fire trucks responded to the scene. Passengers were evacuated from the aircraft. I’ve linked to air traffic control audio, video of the evacuation from both inside and outside the aircraft, and even surveillance footage of the plane impacting the person who had trespassed onto the runway (though I did not embed that video). Here’s the engine after the plane had come to a stop:
The extent of damage to Frontier Flight 4345's right engine. https://t.co/6SX5Mx9D1w pic.twitter.com/heZC5RaS0v
— Turbine Traveller (@Turbinetraveler) May 9, 2026
We now have a ruling in the cause of death for the person on the runway: suicide.
JUST IN: The man who walked in front of a Frontier jet while it was taking off from Denver has been identified as 41-year-old Michael Mott.
Mott had climbed the perimeter fence just minutes before walking on the runway. He was identified by fingerprints at the scene.
According… pic.twitter.com/LMmUyVMO1p
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 12, 2026
The man was identified as Michael Mott, 41. No suicide note has been recovered,and police are still conducting interviews to ascertain the circumstances that led him to scale an 8-foot airport perimeter fence topped with barbed wire, enter a remote airfield area, and reach an active runway within about two minutes.
It’s incredible that after the man was ingested into an aircraft engine that they’re still going to be able to do toxicology testing from ‘samples’. Science, man.
This does not happen often, but ‘suicide by aircraft engine’ is not actually unheard of.
- In January 1990, an American tourist scaled airport barriers at Piarco International Airport, Trinidad, drove onto the tarmac, and in an apparent suicide deliberately entered the engine area of a British Airways 747.
- In May 2020, Austin-Bergstrom International Airport a man was struck and killed by a Southwest jet that had just landed in Austin in what was later determined to be a suicide.
- In June 2023, an airline ground-services worker in San Antonio died after entering the engine area of a Delta A319 that had arrived from Los Angeles and was taxiing. It, too, was found to be a suicide.
- In May 2024, an airport worker at Amsterdam Schipol committed suicide by deliberately climbing into the spinning engine of a KLM Cityhopper aircraft after pushback.
These are different, of course, from pilot suicide such as the Chinese Eastern Boeing 737 case we learned about this month, where China has been hiding the accident report on the grounds that disclosure could endanger national security or social stability.
I called it… sad for the family…
but how selfish.
Sad but people have always done irrational acts.
You forgot about the Horizon Air employee who used his airport access to steal an airplane from SEA and continued flying until he ran out of gas and crashed.
Hulu has documentary about this.
@Disgruntled American – I was specifically excluding people piloting planes as I noted at the end
And said toxicology testing will likely come up “inconclusive.” Mostly because admitting the deceased was likely trippin’ serious balls is more than a little embarrassing for Denver and Colorado’s various legalization dogma.
He went to Darwin without flying Qantas…..
The pilots…the pilots will live with this “snapshot of death” for the rest of their lives. One can hear it in their voices as they told Denver tower that they were stopping on the runway. One can hear it in the tower controller’s voice as he realized what had happened. They didn’t cause it. They didn’t plan it. They couldn’t avoid it. But…that stigma…that flash will haunt them. As a flight instructor and pilot, myself, THEY are the ones I hurt for the most. I hope Frontier will give them time to take a deep breath, seek counseling and, like Captain Sullenberger and FO Skiles, they can get back into the cockpit with a clean conscience knowing that they were just doing their job.
Trust me, an ingestion or prop strike death is nothing you ever want to see unless you want nightmares for the rest of your life.
@Disgruntled American — Quite different. The Sky King 28-year-old Horizon Air ground service agent Richard “Beebo” Russell did not harm anyone, but his companies’ insurance premiums; whereas, the selfish suicide runway runner here endangered over 100 lives. Luckily, no one else died here.
Life is so Precious
1990, correct me if I’m wrong but I noted someone posted somewhere that he “ran out of gas” before crashing. I think he put it into the ground with power on.
@Win Whitmire — From I read, the FBI investigation into the 2018 Horizon Air Bombardier Q400 incident concluded that the final descent to the ground was ”intentional.”
(FBI considered information from the NTSB review of the aircraft’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. The FDR data indicated significant sideslip on the airplane during the final minute of flight, but the airplane appears to have remained in control. If the pilot had wanted to avoid impact with the ground, he had time and energy to pull the column back, raise the nose, and initiate a climb. Instead, the column remained in a position forward of neutral and moved further forward about six seconds prior to the end of the FDR data. There were no collateral human injuries; Russell was the sole fatality.)
Not good, but far more honorable than this Denver runway runner.
1990: I read the NTSB report. The guy wasn’t a pilot but, as an AMT, knew the airplane. I read in one of the comments that the plane ran out of gas. Since he wasn’t a pilot, the sideslip could easily be explained as this guy was trying to “aim” the nose. With the videos of the extreme nose down attitude, any “pull up” would have, likely, resulted in a structural failure. As you and I agree, NOT SO. I will disagree with “more honorable” since suicide is such a selfish act. Ruined a perfectly good airplane, too.