ARFF?
I didn’t know this either. Google told me:
Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting
Google told me ‘Animal Adoption and Rescue Foundation’, because I mis-typed.
Well, it only makes sense that something spelled AARF would have to do with dogs. Aarf aarf!
Seriously …
Ramp vehicles zooming about not giving way to airplanes as they should is a perennial low-level irritant. Typically they’re not on ATC-controlled taxiways, but rather on company-controlled ramp areas. They’re all operating under time pressure and sometimes folks forget that there’s a difference between being time-efficient and hurrying blindly.
Pedestrians on runways … Now there’s a hazard that doesn’t get much thought. Decent bet it was a suicide. Or somebody utterly out of their mind on drugs or crazy.
Them striking an engine is the worst outcome from the airlines’$ POV. Much more costly than whacking them with a landing gear. Even on something as small as an A320, the entire rest of the airplane is too tall to intersect with a standing human.
Sounds like the need for a forensic accountant to see where the owner’s cash flow comes from. I’d make sure he’s charged with removal of the aircraft and any financial convenience for shutting down the airport.
Victor has it up on his YT channel - engine fire & they evacuated on the runway so probably lots of passengers saw the gory aftermath.
Two-clicking it:
link to audio
Listening to the audio reminds me of something I’ve read about trains. Apparently, there’s a disturbingly high percentage of train crews that have had someone commit suicide by train, which ends up traumatizing the crew. These poor pilots may feel the same way, plus they get all the paperwork and investigations… Ugh.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a suicide. Particularly if he contacted the left engine which is on the opposite side of the runway he was crossing. Consider 2 things: the width of the runway, and the speed of the plane. It’s difficult to perceive the closure rate of something moving that fast. I know this from experience trying to retrieve a piece of wood on the highway with a large nail in it. I tried twice and retreated because I simply couldn’t judge the closure rate. and that was moving 10 feet onto the roadway against 65 mph traffic at a relatively steady speed.. A runway is 150 feet wide. A plane is accelerating to something like 140 knots. There’s no chance to accurately gauge the speed of an accelerating plane measured against the distance to cross the runway.
Agree that it’s hard to judge closure of large fast objects.
It’s a commonly cited fact in car / train collisions that folks think they have plenty of time to get across before the train arrives at the crossing. Until suddenly it’s obvious they don’t. KRUNCH!
It’s also the case that the scale of airports is very unfamiliar to ordinary people. Everything is huger than you expect. I’ve only ridden around in an airport pickup truck a few times, but each time I’ve done so I marveled at how much vaster everything seems in a pickup than it does from sitting 15 feet up in even a smallish jet. I have to imagine the effect is even stronger on foot. And for sure, once you try to cross a pavement, it’s going to be wider than you expect. Whether that’s a runway, a taxiway, or a section of parking ramp.
Having said all that …
Here’s the airport diagram of KDEN. It’s a vast and spread-out place. This guy got whacked somewhere in the first ~1/3rd of 17L. It’s a long walk to that area from anywhere at the airport perimeter. It’s also a long walk from that area to anywhere a wacky, but not suicidal, person might want to go. It’s mostly just pavement and rangeland, pavement and rangeland.
It does not take an expert in aviation to know that if you want to cross a vehicle path safely where the vehicles only go by about one per minute at most, wait for one to go by and cross immediately behind it. That way you have plenty of time until the next one shows up. That quits working when traffic gets dense enough, as @Magiver’s anecdote about road debris demonstrates. But traffic on runways just doesn’t get that dense.
My bottom line:
Assessing the “why” of a drunk/druggie or a wacko is a fraught business. But if they weren’t suicidal they definitely demonstrated negligible regard for personal preservation and/or extreme stupidity.
I was wondering how the Frontier Airlines jet had an engine fire after striking a person who trespassed onto the runway (after they jumped the fence). I assumed they were hit by the landing gear but if they were sucked into the engine, that could explain it.
Took on the engine which is only safety rated for thawed chickens.
From the original story linked upthread:
The person struck was at least partially consumed by one of the engines, an official confirmed to ABC News, causing a brief engine fire.
The engine face on an A-320 is plenty low enough to simply strike a standing adult. No sucking needed.
The lower cowl lip would catch a typical adult male somewhere around crotch height or just below. The center of the fan is about adult male face height. The landing gear of course reaches all the way to the ground. But the engine is wider than the gear.
Our decedent had 7 chances to be struck by something: two engines and three landing gear. Just based on total exposed width, I’d bet it’s about 55% engines and 45% gear as the probability of what to get hit by.
For sure at takeoff thrust there’s a real strong suction. But at speeds approaching takeoff the ram effect of the tube of air the engine is running along isn’t trivial either. I’d WAG there’s not much of a “suction” field in that condition. The severe danger condition is high power and low or no speed.
Given the speed of the airplane’s approach to the effectively stationary human, I expect they’d transition from outside whatever suction field there is to whacked by the engine proper before there was time for much suction effect to be felt pulling them towards the engine centerline.
Messy way to die regardless of the details. Closed casket funeral is “highly recommend”. 
ISTM that he’s got a great start on cremation.
Thanks. I think the only reporting I saw avoided mention of the nature of the impact.
And regarding this, I have more experience with Boeing 737 planes, having flown on Southwest Airlines multiple times (including at a couple of airports in the Los Angeles area where we walk out onto the tarmac and board via a roll-up ramp). I’ve noticed that the engine on the 737 is quite low, only two or three feet above ground level.
Yeah, those are a good deal lower yet. The 737 lower cowl lip catches me at about the kneecaps. I’m 5’-10".
I really don’t get how they’re not constantly sucking up FOD.
I think the airports are careful to keep the tarmac clear of debris.