Mullin’s airplane made emergency landing after engine failure

A plane carrying Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin had to make an emergency landing on Wednesday after an engine failure.

“We just lost our right engine, would like to declare an emergency,” the pilot of the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) plane told air traffic control, according to audio from ATC.com and shared on social platform X by @thedmvlive.

The pilot also requested approval to make an “immediate landing” at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) outside of Washington, D.C.

An air traffic controller directed the pilot to land on Runway 1 at DCA. The pilot then said the plane had 14 passengers on board and less than three hours’ worth of fuel.

The C-37A Gulfstream aircraft took off at 12:09 p.m. EDT from Lawson Army Airfield near Columbus, Ga., and landed at DCA just a little more than 90 minutes later, according to data from ADS-B Exchange .

Mullin said Wednesday the pilots of the plane “made the single engine landing feel routine.”

The DHS secretary wrote on X , “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.”

When reached for further comment, a DHS spokesperson referred The Hill to Mullin’s post. The Hill has also reached out to the Coast Guard for comment.

Last year, Democratic Reps. Bennie Thompson (Miss.) and LaMonica McIver (N.J.) highlighted the Coast Guard’s “aging aircraft fleet” in a letter to former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

The two lawmakers referenced an April 2024 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which noted “many” Coast Guard aircraft entered service in the 1980s and 1990s.

Citing that, Thompson and McIver criticized Noem for requesting funding for a new $50 million Gulfstream jet to replace a plane that entered service in 2022.

The two wrote that funding “the acquisition of this new jet would come at the cost of other USCG investments, including sorely needed modernization” of the service’s fleet.