A Coast Guard aircraft carrying Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin declared an in-flight emergency after losing an engine, then landed safely outside Washington, D.C., with more than a dozen people aboard. The episode drew fresh attention to a jet that the department itself has described as approaching obsolescence, and to a years-long, increasingly contentious effort in Congress to pay for its replacement. No injuries were reported, and air traffic at the airport continued without disruption.
“We Just Lost Our Right Engine”
The aircraft, a C-37A operating under the call sign “Coast Guard 101,” was airborne when its pilot radioed air traffic controllers at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to declare the emergency. “We just lost our right engine and would like to declare an emergency and immediate landing at DCA,” the pilot said, according to an audio recording of the exchange. The pilot told controllers the jet had 14 people aboard and roughly two and a half hours of fuel remaining, giving the crew a workable margin to set up for landing rather than an immediate crisis. The C-37A is the military designation for a Gulfstream V, and it is the aircraft routinely used to fly senior Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security officials, including the secretary, since the Coast Guard falls under DHS. The Gulfstream V is a twin-engine business jet built to keep flying and land safely on a single engine, a certification requirement for any twin-engine aircraft that carries passengers; the design assumes one engine can fail without stripping the aircraft of its ability to climb, maneuver and reach a runway.
How Pilots Handle a Single-Engine Emergency
Declaring an in-flight emergency, sometimes called “squawking 7700” after the transponder code pilots use to alert air traffic control, gives a crew priority handling: controllers clear surrounding traffic, ready emergency crews on the ground and can shorten or simplify the approach so the aircraft reaches the runway with minimal delay. Losing an engine forces a pilot to compensate for lopsided thrust, using rudder and aileron inputs to keep the aircraft flying straight, while also managing reduced climb performance and, in some cases, extra drag from a windmilling propeller or fan. Training for exactly this scenario is a standard part of every twin-engine pilot’s recurrent certification, which is why crews practice single-engine approaches and landings routinely in simulators even though, as Mullin noted, actually performing one outside of training is rare for most pilots.
Regardless of how routine the underlying procedure is in training, the fact that both pilots later told Mullin it was their first real single-engine landing outside a simulator underscores how uncommon actual engine failures are in modern business jets, which undergo extensive maintenance and inspection cycles precisely to keep failure rates low.
A Safe Landing at Reagan National
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority said the jet, after reporting a “possible mechanical issue” in the early afternoon, landed safely and was inspected by airport fire and rescue crews before taxiing off the runway under its own power, a detail confirmed in reporting from Flying magazine. The authority said the single-engine landing caused no disruption to other flights operating at the busy airport, and CBS News reported that no injuries resulted from the incident. Mullin later described the landing on social media, writing that “the United States Coast Guard pilots made the single engine landing feel routine. No panic, just straight professionalism,” and adding that the pilots told him afterward it was the first time either of them had performed a real single-engine landing outside of training.
An Aircraft Flagged for Obsolescence
The emergency renewed scrutiny of an airframe that DHS has for more than a year said is overdue for retirement. The department stated in 2025 that the Coast Guard’s executive jet was roughly 22 years old and faced “significant avionics and communications obsolescence issues,” part of the justification for a request to Congress for a replacement. Then-Secretary Kristi Noem told a Senate hearing in May that the existing jet had been in service “beyond its usable hours,” underscoring how long the request for new aircraft had been pending relative to the plane’s condition.
A Funding Request That Grew, and Grew Scrutiny With It
DHS’s fiscal year 2025 spending plan initially sought about $50 million to replace the aging jet, a figure that drew questions from lawmakers including Democratic Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois during an appropriations hearing. By October 2025, the request had grown to roughly $200 million for two new Gulfstream G700 aircraft, prompting further pushback from Capitol Hill. Democratic Reps. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and LaMonica McIver of New Jersey pressed DHS on why upgrading the executive fleet should take priority over replacing older Coast Guard aircraft used for search-and-rescue missions, a question that took on new resonance once the executive jet itself suffered an in-flight failure. The first of the two replacement G700s was delivered in January, but the second had not yet reached DHS at the time of the emergency landing, leaving the aging C-37A in active rotation.
Why the Delay Mattered This Time
Because the newer replacement jet was not yet in service, the secretary and the officials traveling with him were still flying on the aircraft DHS itself had spent more than a year describing as obsolete when the engine failed. The Coast Guard referred requests for comment to DHS following the incident, and DHS did not immediately detail the cause of the engine loss. The episode is likely to feature in future budget hearings as lawmakers weigh the cost of accelerating the delivery of the second G700 against other Coast Guard aviation needs, a debate that had already been simmering for more than a year before Wednesday’s emergency gave it new urgency.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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