A Frontier Airlines flight en route from Denver to Minneapolis aborted its takeoff Thursday morning after a bird strike.
Officials believe a barn owl collided with the plane about 6:30 a.m., according to Heath Montgomery, a spokesman for the Denver International Airport.
No one was injured, Montgomery said, adding that the flight was still on the runway when the bird strike occurred.
“The jet returned to the gate,” Montgomery said. “The passengers eventually got out of there about an hour and 20 minutes later than their original departure time.”
Airport officials said they partner with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to mitigate bird strikes at the airport through a variety of methods, including pyrotechnics and traps.
“They really do great work for us, but they can’t catch everything,” Montgomery.
Information about potential damage to the aircraft was not immediately available.
Bird strikes have been .
In 2008, the airport was ranked by the Federal Aviation Administration as the nation’s No. 1 airport in the number of bird and wildlife strikes with 318. The Associated Press reported that year that the airport had the most reported bird strikes in the country between 1998 and 2008 with 2,090.
Bird strikes, which experts say happen often at DIA because of the vast space the airport covers, can cost millions of dollars and halt air travel.
Jesse Paul: 303-954-1733, jpaul@denverpost.com or twitter.com/JesseAPaul
