American Airlines Plane Catches Fire at Denver Airport, Forces Evacuation

Airport officials said 12 people were sent to hospitals with minor injuries.

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.

The airport said the fire was extinguished, according to Denver’s KDVR News. Airport officials said 12 people were sent to hospitals with minor injuries.

Videos and photos posted by news outlets showed smoke enveloping the aircraft as passengers stood on the plane’s wing. Airport personnel rushed to the scene with ladders; while, moments later, other passengers exited the plane via the slides.

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.

In a late-evening post on social media platform X, Denver International Airport said all passengers were safely evacuated from the plane, and airport operations had returned to normal.

In a statement, American Airlines said the plane experienced an engine-related issue after taxiing to the gate but did not explain exactly when it caught fire. The airline referred questions about the 12 injured passengers to local officials.

Ten people were taken to the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, but there was no update on how many remained in the hospital on Friday, according to hospital spokesperson Kelli Christensen.

The airline said a replacement plane and crew took passengers to Dallas-Fort Worth, where the original flight was headed. The replacement flight landed on Friday at roughly 5 a.m. local time, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

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 and The Associated Press contributed to this report.