Lorraine Ali: Could Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's new travel show be making travel less safe?

Lorraine Ali, Los Angeles Times on Aug 27, 2026

Published in Op Eds

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This is a tale of two documentaries.

One is a lightweight reality series that follows a family’s trek across the United States. The other is a powerful exposé on the safety breaches that have caused deadly crashes and accidents on Boeing airplanes.

The two August releases, one on Netflix and the other on YouTube, appear to have nothing in common. But they are unintentionally linked by their stars and sponsors.

“Great American Road Trip” follows Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and his family as they celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary by trekking across the country with cameras in tow. It’s Duffy’s return to reality TV after his introduction to fame in the ‘90s on MTV’s “The Real World: Boston.” But there’s more to this show than stopping in diners to eat with real folk or Duffy warning his daughter about the liberal dangers of attending a college such as Harvard: “They have professionalized how (to) take good young girls like you and corrupt their minds,” he says.

The show’s corporate sponsors are companies that the Department of Transportation oversees, and Boeing is one such sponsor.

Lawmakers, including Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., questioned Duffy during hearings and requested formal investigations into whether these corporate sponsors expected preferential access or regulatory influence. Duffy has denied wrongdoing. Watchdog organizations like the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed complaints with the Department of Transportation inspector general, alleging potential violations of federal gift and travel rules, product endorsements, and misuse of an official position.

But why should We the People care about a vapid reality show when there are other pressing issues screaming for our attention, like the mysterious origins of tariff-free ground beef or whether we’ll soon be at war with Canada (a country that most certainly does have a military)?

The answer comes in the form of Netflix’s eye-opening documentary “Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing.” The film by Rory Kennedy (“Downfall: The Case Against Boeing”) explores the manufacturing blunders and cover-ups at Boeing that led to 346 deaths in two 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019, and multiple subsequent accidents.

The film explores what has — or, more importantly, hasn’t — happened to make the company’s planes safer, and it’s hardly comforting. After the deadly crashes, Boeing negotiated a “deferred prosecution agreement” with the Justice Department, which meant that criminal fraud charges would be dropped if the company avoided more scandals and accidents for three years. Boeing did not make it past the probationary period when in January 2024, the rear door on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max plane blew off midair. Miraculously, the plane with its 171 passengers was able to land with no fatalities. An investigation found that Boeing had improperly fitted the outsourced fuselage and door plug parts.

Last year, Boeing and the Department of Justice reached another non-prosecution agreement, allowing the company to avoid trial by paying additional penalties and compliance investments. A month before the documentary premiered on Netflix, a passenger was partially sucked through a broken window on a 737-800 Boeing plane when the cabin lost pressure after the plane took off from Thessaloniki, Greece.

Duffy is in charge of regulating safe travel for the public. But now that he has called in favors from Boeing, as well as other financiers of his show that include Toyota, Shell, United Airlines, Royal Caribbean, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Lyft and the U.S. Travel Assn., there is the potential that he and our safety have been compromised.

If we’re to believe what’s chronicled in “Freefall” by former Boeing employees, aviation experts, crash investigators and the families of those who perished in the 737 Max crashes, there’s already a thin line of accountability. The Department of Transportation should not be accepting gifts from the corporations it’s meant to regulate.

Duffy’s hubris of funding his travel show through his government position would have been unthinkable under any other administration, Republican or Democrat. Today, however, it’s on brand with the $2.5 billion that President Trump has made off his second term in office, and we still have a couple of years to go. Bitcoin schemes, defense contracts brokered within the president’s family, Qatari gift planes.

Duffy’s silly reality show, in which he praises Republican mega-donor Citadel CEO Ken Griffin as a “great American patriot” in the first episode, is small peanuts in comparison. Yet “Freefall” shows us why uncompromised government oversight is so critical. It’s one of many safety nets in place that should instill confidence when we board planes, cruise ships or simply pack up the car for a weekend getaway.

This is a tale of two documentaries that tell one big story ... if we connect the dots.

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