{"id":227046,"date":"2026-05-11T11:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T11:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/227046\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T11:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T11:21:09","slug":"denver-airports-frontier-airlines-death-highlights-major-problem-for-airport-bigger-than-manhattan-boston-and-miami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/227046\/","title":{"rendered":"Denver airport&#8217;s Frontier Airlines death highlights major problem for airport bigger than Manhattan, Boston, and Miami"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">A fatal incident at Denver International Airport has drawn concerns towards the security protocols at the huge airport. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">On Friday (May 8) a person sadly died <a class=\"anchor_link__6t7IO\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unilad.com\/news\/us-news\/frontier-airlines-denver-international-airport-pedestrian-killed-323961-20260509\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">after being struck by a Frontier Airlines aircraft<\/a> on the runway just before take off. Over 200 passengers on the <a class=\"anchor_link__6t7IO\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unilad.com\/plane\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">plane <\/a>were told to immediately evacuate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">It has been said that the person who died had jumped the perimeter fence, and made their way onto the runway.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">After the harrowing ordeal, Denver airport said in a statement to <a class=\"anchor_link__6t7IO\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/frontier-airlines-plane-strikes-person-audio-runway-denver-we-just-hit-somebody-11931959\">Newsweek<\/a>: \u201c[The airport] will perform an incident analysis and after action in the coming days which will include reviewing the ongoing investigation, including our perimeter security program.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">They then added that they were \u2018gathering more information in coordination with the airport and other safety facilities\u2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">However, the challenges of securing an airport which is twice the size of <a class=\"anchor_link__6t7IO\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unilad.com\/new-york\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Manhattan<\/a>, and larger than the city boundaries of<a class=\"anchor_link__6t7IO\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unilad.com\/massachusetts\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Boston<\/a> have been highlighted. <\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Denver airport is the third busiest by passengers in the state (Getty Stock Image)\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"article-image_image__XvzgU\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/aHR0cHM6Ly9ldS1pbWFnZXMuY29udGVudHN0YWNrLmNvbS92My9hc3NldHMvYmx0OTQ5ZWE4ZTE2ZTQ2MzA0OS9ibHQwZjI0OTJl.webp\"\/>Denver airport is the third busiest by passengers in the state (Getty Stock Image)How big is Denver International Airport?<\/p>\n<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">There are around 36 miles of perimeter fence at Denver airport, with staff undergoing regular inspections.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">The airport itself operates on 53 square miles of land, the airport&#8217;s <a class=\"anchor_link__6t7IO\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flydenver.com\/about-den\/\">website<\/a> states, which is twice the size of Manhattan. The New York borough is roughly 22.8-square-miles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">Not only that, it&#8217;s \u2018larger than the city boundaries of Boston, Miami or San Francisco.\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">It\u2019s also the States\u2019 third busiest airport by passengers, and airports including \u2018Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, Chicago O\u2019Hare, Los Angeles International and Dallas Fort Worth\u2019 could jointly fit into DEN\u2019s property.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">However, this comes with setbacks, according to one expert.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">\u201cThe 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,\u201d William Rankin, an adjunct professor at Florida Institute of Technology specialising in researching airport management and safety told <a class=\"anchor_link__6t7IO\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2026\/05\/11\/us\/denver-airport-safety-analysis#:~:text=The%20fatal%20incident%20has%20drawn,a%20runway%20at%20the%20airport.\">CNN<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"The incident has highlighted a problem with the huge airport (Getty Stock)\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"article-image_image__XvzgU\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/aHR0cHM6Ly9ldS1pbWFnZXMuY29udGVudHN0YWNrLmNvbS92My9hc3NldHMvYmx0OTQ5ZWE4ZTE2ZTQ2MzA0OS9ibHRhNzYzNWNk.webp\"\/>The incident has highlighted a problem with the huge airport (Getty Stock)<\/p>\n<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">However, Rankin stressed to the publication that pedestrian incursions, and the event on Friday are \u2018extremely rare\u2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">He also said the incident \u2018shouldn&#8217;t make citizens lose confidence in the security of major US airports.\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">It&#8217;s not the first time someone has breached the perimeter fence at the airport. Between the years of 2004 &#8211; 2015, the airport had seen eight breaches, an investigation by <a class=\"anchor_link__6t7IO\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/general-news-bf1d6263085f4844a5da9cd3c9a811d6\">The Associated Press<\/a> revealed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text_text__nEn66\">A spokeswoman for the airport at the time said: \u201cWe believe many folks do not realize they are even on airport property \u2014 it looks like farmland and a breach may be miles and miles away from a runway or the terminal.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fatal incident at Denver International Airport has drawn concerns towards the security protocols at the huge airport.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63,70061,956,58],"class_list":["post-227046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-plane","tag-travel","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}