Plane Carrying Trump’s DHS Boss Makes Emergency Landing in Alarming Failure

KENT NISHIMURA / Kent NISHIMURA / AFP via Getty Images A jet carrying a senior member of Donald Trump’s Cabinet was forced into an emergency landing in the nation’s capital after one of its engines failed midflight, the latest scare in D.C.’s increasingly jittery airspace.

The U.S.

Coast Guard aircraft was carrying Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin when it made the emergency landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday afternoon.

“The United States Coast Guard pilots made the single engine landing feel routine.

No panic, just straight professionalism,” Mr.

Mullin posted on social media.

“After we landed, the pilots told me that was a first for them! We could not have been in better hands.” The incident happened at around 1:35 p.m., according to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which manages the airport, which in January last year was the scene of the deadliest commercial aviation accident in the U.S. in over two decades.

“We just lost our right engine and would like to declare an emergency and immediate landing at DCA,” the pilot of the Coast Guard jet, a GulfStream C-37A, told controllers at the facility in Potomac, Maryland, that handles traffic entering and exiting Washington’s airspace, according to an audio recording.

The pilot added that they had “14 souls on board,” and about two and a half hours of fuel remaining.

Controllers guided the plane to a runway at Reagan National, where it landed safely with no disruption to other flights, the airport authority said.

The C-37A, a military version of the Gulfstream V, had taken off from Lawson Army Airfield near Columbus, Georgia, roughly 90 minutes earlier, according to open-source flight tracking.

The Coast Guard, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, has previously defended requests for funding to replace one of its two long-range command aircraft.

“The current CG-101 G550 is over 20 years old, outside of Gulfstream’s service life, and well beyond operational usage hours for a corporate aircraft,” then-Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement posted online at the time.

“This is a matter of safety.” The scare adds to a rocky stretch for the administration’s air travel.