In one of those cases, a man crashed through a perimeter fence gate, causing more than $2,000 in damage as he drove onto the airfield, according to records obtained from the Denver Police Department. In another, a man jumped the fence after crashing his car nearby and was found sitting on an active taxiway at about 6:40 a.m. A third fence-hopper told police he was trying to walk to Texas.

Airport safety experts say the number isn’t immediately alarming. While incidents may appear to be happening more frequently, it����ap likely a matter of better detection and increased reporting, said , an assistant professor of aviation and aerospace sciences at the Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Heth has worked in the aviation industry since 2009, spending years as both an airport operations manager in Florida and a flight coordinator for a Colorado flight school.

Fatal incidents like the May crash that killed Michael Mott are extremely rare, Heth said. Advanced technology means security can usually catch trespassers before something bad can happen, she said.

“Fences are there to keep honest people out,” Heth said. “If somebody is really intent on getting through a fence, they’re going to get through.”

Mott, 41, scaled DIA’s 8-foot, barbed-wire-topped security fence and walked onto a runway shortly before 11:20 p.m. on May 8. He was struck and killed by a Frontier plane accelerating for takeoff, and Denver Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Sterling McLaren ruled his death a suicide.

�Ѵdzٳ�’s breach of the airport security fence was unusual, but not the airport����ap first encounter with trespassers, according to police records.

Since January 2023, Denver police officers have responded to six cases of people breaching the airport perimeter fence, including the fatal May crash, and two trespassing cases in which people jumped the boundary fence into the airport����ap warehouse area, police records show. The earliest incident in 2023 occurred in September, according to those records.

At least two of the airport����ap eight trespassers had active arrest warrants at the time of their breach — one for a failure to appear in Denver court on a traffic charge and one for motor vehicle theft, according to the probable cause statements.

The report for the incident resulting in �Ѵdzٳ�’s death was not yet available because the case remains under investigation.

DIA officials declined to comment on the trespasses.

It����ap difficult to know how DIA’s perimeter breaches compare to the rest of the country because airports all report trespassing incidents differently and there’s no national database, Heth said.

But the Federal Aviation Administration does keep track of at airports with traffic control towers, including DIA, .

Incursions boil down to planes, vehicles and people being in the wrong place at the wrong time. According to the FAA, incursions include air traffic control errors that don’t leave enough space between planes and obstacles on runways or that clear aircraft to take off from or land on closed runways; pilot actions that violate federal aviation regulations, like crossing runways without clearance; and pedestrians or vehicles entering airport runways or taxiways without authorization.

Of the 19,482 airports in the United States, 527 have air traffic control towers, . Just over 5,100 of those airports are public, and more than 14,300 are private.

Roughly 5,890 runway incursions were reported at airports with air traffic control towers between January 2023 and June 2026, according to quarterly totals from the FAA’s . Of those, 1,022 involved unauthorized pedestrians or vehicles entering the airfield.

Only two of the incidents documented by police at DIA during that time appear in the FAA’s . A total of 37 incidents involving unauthorized vehicles and pedestrians at the Denver airport show up in the database, dating back to April 2006.

The Denver Police Department has a dedicated Airport Police Bureau at DIA “with officers at the ready to swiftly respond to emergencies and safety issues,” police spokesman Doug Schepman said in a statement.

“The Airport Police Bureau works closely with Airport Operations at DEN and monitors operational data, and the bureau adjusts resources when trends are identified,” Schepman said. “This is the same approach the Denver Police Department takes in its citywide operations.”

The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board declined to comment on DIA’s perimeter fence breaches.

“Trespassing doesn’t necessarily equal a security failure,” Heth said. “The fact that we’re talking about these right now often means that the system worked. The alarms were activated, the airport operations center sent out law enforcement and they responded.”

When Heth worked as an airport operations manager at Pensacola International Airport in Florida, a position she held from 2009 to 2015, she said a gust of wind was enough to set off the warning sensors and launch an investigation into the potential trespasser.

Now, alarms and cameras are more sophisticated, and it����ap much easier to catch fence jumpers before anything bad happens, she said.

“We’ve got better analytics, better technology, an improved reporting culture and better training with our airport employees,” Heth said. “I don’t think that it����ap anything alarming or dramatic.”

Still, Heth said it����ap important that airport officials look at each incident and learn from it, “closing any vulnerabilities” that may have made it easier for people to enter the secured airfield.

As of 4:30 p.m. Sunday, 490 Denver flights had failed to leave the gate on time and six had been canceled, .

The Federal Aviation Administration had issued a ground delay for DIA at that time, delaying flights by an average of 29 minutes, . Delays were expected to continue into the evening, with the longest expected between 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday.

Most of Eastern Colorado was under a severe thunderstorm watch on Sunday, including Adams, Arapahoe, Baca, Bent, Cheyenne, Crowley, Denver, Douglas, Elbert, El Paso, Kiowa, Kit Carson, Las Animas, Lincoln, Logan, Morgan, Otero, Phillips, Prowers, Pueblo, Sedgwick, Teller, Washington, Weld and Yuma counties, .

Scattered hail up to the size of ping pong balls, 70mph wind and frequent lightning will be possible, .

Southwest delayed 179 flights on Sunday, followed by 126 from SkyWest, 114 from United, 17 from Frontier, 16 from American Airlines and 10 from Delta, according to FlightAware. Another nine airlines delayed between one and seven flights.

Cancellations included three United flights, two Southwest flights and one Frontier flight.

Delays were nearly evenly split between flights arriving in Denver and flights trying to leave the city, according to FlightAware. All but one of the canceled flights were scheduled to arrive in Denver.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

The Federal Aviation Administration lifted the ground stop at 4 p.m. and said flights headed to DIA are delayed by an average of two hours.

Airlines canceled dozens and delayed hundreds of flights Saturday at DIA, including 91 flight cancellations and 708 flight delays as of 4:30 p.m., according to the flight tracking website .

SkyWest reported 38 canceled flights and 121 delays, followed by 34 canceled flights and 265 delays on United Airlines and 14 cancellations and 211 delays on Southwest. Frontier Airlines also canceled five flights and delayed 49.

Storms are expected to continue until the evening, according to the National Weather Service.

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded flights headed to DIA at 3:25 p.m. because of the weather, lifting the order at around 6:30 p.m.

Arriving flights were delayed by 2 hours and 54 minutes on average as of 7 p.m. because of the weather, federal officials said.

More than 1,000 flights were delayed or canceled at the airport on Friday evening, data from the showed. There were 972 flight delays and 113 canceled flights as of 6:55 p.m., including 357 delays on United flight delays, 277 delays on Southwest, 169 on SkyWest and 64 on Frontier.

Skywest canceled 95 flights, followed by Frontier Airlines with eight cancellations and United with four and Southwest with three.

As of 7:25 p.m. Tuesday, 925 flights headed in and out of Denver were delayed and 40 were canceled entirely, according to .

The issued a ground delay for Denver International Airport shortly before 2 p.m. Tuesday that was lifted later in the day.

Hefty delays are expected through 9 p.m. Tuesday, according to FAA officials.

Tuesday delays included 355 United flights, 279 Southwest flights, 156 SkyWest flights, 60 Frontier flights, 23 American Airlines flights and 17 Delta flights, according to FlightAware.

Southwest also canceled 11 flights, followed by eight each from SkyWest and United, six from Delta, four from American Airlines and three from JetBlue, according to FlightAware.

The Parker Town Council unanimously passed an emergency ordinance Monday that places a nine-month moratorium on the town accepting applications from retailers to establish drone dispatch and delivery facilities.

About 24 hours later, the Castle Rock Town Council passed a similar ban. Castle Rock’s timeout will last six months.

Both towns recently received inquiries from Walmart and Wing about launching a drone operation to make deliveries for the retail behemoth, be it printer cartridges, a banana or a bottle of cold medicine. Wing, which is owned by the Google parent company Alphabet, , including Houston, Dallas and Atlanta.

Drone delivery has yet to take off in Colorado, though it is .

“The town council thinks this is going to happen in the future and we don’t want to be the test case for it,” Castle Rock Mayor Jason Gray said Tuesday. “A lot of people are asking how loud they are, how often they will fly and at what distance around town.”

A glimpse at answers to some of those questions came during Parker’s Town Council meeting Monday night. Town planner Elizabeth Steward told the council that the drones proposed for the town would fly at heights between 150 feet and 400 feet, though they could drop down and hover around 40 feet above the ground when delivering or retrieving items.

The loudest a drone would get when delivering merchandise, she said, would be 62.6 decibels, which sound experts say is .

Councilwoman Brandi Wilks said she worries about how delivery drones might impact wildlife and whether they will conflict with drones the Parker Police Department regularly flies.

Councilman Todd Hendreks said a pause was needed as the town tried to wrap its head around the technology and devise the most appropriate ways to deploy it. The move by both Douglas County towns this week echoed the go-slow approach some Colorado communities have taken recently with other emerging technologies, such as the development of artificial intelligence-driven data centers.

“With emerging technology, since we have really nothing to address this, I think it’s important to give (town) staff time to review and come back to us with whatever they find,” Hendreks said.

Parker plans to hire a consultant to come up with rules for managing delivery drones in town.

Ultimately, though, cities and towns in Colorado are limited in what they can control when it comes to drones. That’s because the Federal Aviation Administration has jurisdiction over airspace, aircraft operations, flight paths, altitude and in-flight noise, according to .

A municipality’s regulatory authority is “generally limited to the land use and site-related aspects of the operation, including where launch and landing infrastructure may be located,” and how the site is designed, the memo says.

Delivery drones in Castle Rock would have to compete with the town’s drones-as-first-responder program, which it launched through its police department last summer.

“The FAA will have ultimate control — we’re hoping we have enough control that we can guide the process as well,” said Gray, Castle Rock’s mayor.

According to , the drone delivery business is poised for robust growth as consumers who shop by smartphone — and from their couches — become hungrier for faster delivery times. The forecasting firm projects that the global industry will grow from just over $5 billion this year to nearly $21 billion in 2034.

The firm said North America “dominated the drone package delivery market with a market share of 35.47% in 2025.”

Gray said it’s one thing when it’s just Walmart flying merchandise to people’s front steps in Castle Rock. But if drones prove popular with consumers, others are sure to get in on the action.

“If we have 18 different retailers doing delivery by drone, I don’t know what that’s going to look like,” he said. “If drones were flying by your house 15 to 25 times a day, my citizens might not like it.”

In May, Walmart , boasting that it is operating the service across 66 stores in four states. Its fastest delivery time so far is 4 minutes and 44 seconds, though the average delivery time for an order is 23 minutes.

Parker Councilwoman Anne Barrington conceded that while the latest wave in shopping convenience is fraught with uncertainty, she has no doubt that it’s coming — and Parker better be ready.

“We’re not saying no — we’re just saying no today,” she said.

As of 6 p.m. Sunday, 619 flights had been delayed and seven had been canceled, according to . The delays were split nearly evenly, affecting 332 flights departing the Denver airport and 287 flights arriving, according to FlightAware.

Colorado weather: Landspout tornadoes spotted on Eastern Plains amid severe thunderstorm watch

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a weather-based departure delay at DIA shortly after 2 p.m. Sunday, which was lifted by 3:30 p.m., . No traffic management programs were in place at 6 p.m. Sunday.

Southwest delayed 216 flights in and out of Denver on Sunday, followed by 202 from United, 104 from SkyWest, 46 from Frontier, 17 from American Airlines and 11 from Delta, according to FlightAware. Nine other airlines delayed between one and five flights, and United canceled all seven flights.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

Federal Aviation Administration officials ordered the ground stop at 3:41 p.m. and downgraded it to a ground delay just before 5 p.m.

The airport was put on a departure delay at 6:43 p.m., with departing flights delayed by an average of 15 minutes.

Colorado weather: Forecasters warn of damaging hail in Douglas, Weld counties

Airlines at DIA reported 480 delayed flights as of 7 p.m. Wednesday, including 163 on United Airlines, 129 on Southwest and 122 on SkyWest, according to the flight tracking website .

The FAA issued the ground stop at DIA just after 1 p.m. Monday, . The agency downgraded the stop to a delay at 3:08 p.m., and it was expected to be in place until 8:59 p.m.

The National Weather Service issued a for the Denver area and the Eastern Plains shortly before the ground delay took effect, which will be active until 8 p.m., and a will be in effect for the airport until 3 p.m. Monday.

Colorado weather: Severe thunderstorm warning issued for Denver, Aurora

As of 5:13 p.m., 836 flights had been delayed and six had been canceled, . Roughly half of the delayed flights were trying to depart DIA, and half were scheduled to arrive at the Denver airport.

Delays included 280 United flights, 232 Southwest flights, 191 SkyWest flights, 56 Frontier flights, 21 Delta flights and 16 American Airlines flights, according to FlightAware.

SkyWest canceled three flights, United canceled two and Alaska canceled one, according to FlightAware.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued the ground stop at 3:13 p.m. and lifted it as of 4:50 p.m., according to agency alerts.

Thunderstorms could bring tennis-ball-sized hail, winds up to 70 mph and tornadoes to Colorado’s Eastern Plains through Saturday night, according to the National Weather Service.

Colorado weather: Severe thunderstorm watch active for Eastern Plains

Weather sensors logged at the airport on Saturday afternoon.

Airlines at DIA reported 276 delayed flights as of 4:55 p.m., including 96 delays on United Airlines, 73 on Southwest and 61 on SkyWest, according to the flight tracking website .