A person has died after being struck by a plane during take-off, after jumping a fence at Denver International Airport, Colorado.

Airport authorities said the collision sparked an engine fire on the Frontier Airlines plane and forced passengers to evacuate.

The plane, scheduled to fly to Los Angeles, “reported striking a pedestrian during take-off” at Denver at approximately 11:19pm on Friday,” according to a post on the airport’s official X account.

A spokesperson for the airport said the person, who jumped a perimeter fence, has died.

They said the person, who has not yet been identified publicly, was hit 2 minutes after entering the airport.

The person is not believed to be an airport employee.

“We’re stopping on the runway,” the pilot told the control tower, according to the site ATC.com, which monitors air traffic control communications.

The pilot told the air traffic controller they had 231 people on board and that an “individual was walking across the runway”.

The air traffic controller responded that they are “rolling the trucks now” before the pilot told the tower they “have smoke in the aircraft” and that they were going to evacuate on the runway.

Frontier Airlines said in a statement that flight 4345 was involved in the collision and that “smoke was reported in the cabin and the pilots aborted take-off”.

It was not clear whether the smoke was linked to the collision.

The airline said it was investigating in coordination with safety authorities.

Passengers were evacuated via slides and the emergency crew bussed them to the terminal.

The airport spokesperson said 12 passengers suffered minor injuries and five were taken to hospitals.

One passenger, Jacob Athens, posted a video showing people sliding down with their backpacks.

He also posted photos of what looked like a damaged engine.