American Airlines Plane Catches Fire at Denver Airport, Forces Evacuation

No injuries were reported as of 6:15 p.m. local time.

An American Airlines plane catches fire at Denver International Airport in Denver, Colo., on March 13, 2025. @steve_schilsky/X via CNN Newsource

Passengers were forced to evacuate from an American Airlines plane that caught fire on March 13 at Denver International Airport.

American Airlines Flight 1006 was departing from Colorado Springs Airport and headed to Dallas Fort Worth when the crew reported engine vibrations, forcing a diversion to Denver International Airport. The plane landed around 5:15 p.m. local time on Thursday, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

The plane, a Boeing 737-800, landed safely and began taxiing to the gate when its engine caught fire. The passengers exited the plane using evacuation slides, the spokesperson said.

The FAA is investigating the incident.

There were no injuries reported as of 6:15 p.m., according to Denver’s KDVR News, which cited Denver International Airport. The airport said the fire was extinguished, the report said.

A spokesperson for the Denver International Airport confirmed the incident to The Epoch Times but referred inquiries on passenger injuries to the Denver Fire Department.

The fire is the latest in a string of aviation incidents since late January’s deadly midair collision between a passenger jet and a military helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, which killed all 67 people aboard.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) this week recommended permanent restrictions on helicopter routes around the airport, which caused narrow clearances between those aircraft and commercial planes. The helicopter was also flying too high for that route, and its crew missed a critical air traffic control radio transmission moments before the crash, the NTSB said.

Two days after that collision, a medical transport jet crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood, killing seven people and leaving more than a dozen injured.

On Feb. 17, a Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis crash-landed into a runway in Toronto before catching fire, skidding across the tarmac, and flipping over. All 80 on board survived, with 21 sent to hospitals with injuries.

However, an analysis of NTSB incident data indicated that as of late February, there had not been a larger number of airplane incidents since the beginning of the year compared to all years for the past decade.

Aviation experts also told The Epoch Times that the accident rate for commercial aviation is decreasing, as it remains the safest form of transportation.

Reuters contributed to this report.