A scare in the skies for Trump Administration: Homeland security secretary's plane loses engine and makes emergency landing
The pilot reported that there were 14 people on board the aircraft and that the plane had approximately two and a half hours of fuel remaining.
Markwayne Mullin on Capitol Hill / Saul Loeb
The administration of President Donald Trump faced a new and unexpected aviation incident on Wednesday, when a U.S. Coast Guard aircraft carrying Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was forced to make an emergency landing after losing one of its engines. "We just lost our right engine, would like to declare an emergency," the pilot told air traffic control, according to audio of the communications shared online by @thedmvlive. Seconds later, the crew requested permission for an "immediate landing" at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), where air traffic controllers instructed them to use Runway 1.
The C-37A Gulfstream took off from Lawson Army Airfield, near Columbus, Ga., at 12:09 p.m. Eastern Time and arrived at DCA just over 90 minutes later, according to tracking data from ADS-B Exchange. The pilot reported that there were 14 people on board the aircraft and that it had approximately two and a half hours of fuel remaining.
On his official X account, Mullin praised the way the crew handled the emergency and stated that the pilots "made the single engine landing feel routine." The Secretary of Homeland Security also described the incident: "No panic, just straight professionalism. After we landed, the pilots told me that was a first for them! We could not have been in better hands."
The incident took place almost a month after Trump narrowly avoided a terrible plane crash when the helicopter he was in, Marine One, flew very close to a passenger plane. The incident, initially reported by the Wall Street Journal, occurred on Tuesday, Aug. 4, shortly after 2:30 p.m., during the initial leg of a presidential trip with Los Angeles as its final destination. Since July, Trump has been taking off and landing from the Ellipse, a public park south of the White House, as the traditional South Lawn area remains closed due to construction of a new heliport. This change in routine disrupted a flight plan that was already one of the most delicate in the country, as it involves the simultaneous coordination of military aircraft, civilian helicopters and commercial flights from three different airports within the same airspace.
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