Sean Duffy wants more civility in air travel. Not everyone is on board - BBC

● Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s “Great American Road Trip” reality travel show is financed by corporations that his department oversees. Boeing is one such sponsor.● “Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing” is a documentary film that 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.● Together, these new streaming releases show why it’s important to have uncompromised regulation of airlines, automobiles and other forms of travel. 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.

I am a sucker for a travel show—if it involves people going to a place and doing a thing, count me in. My current favorites include the BBC’s “Race Across the World,” in which the scenery is usually the star—last season, sweeping shots of frozen mountain vistas had me itching to book a trip to Mongolia—and “Jet Lag: The Game,” a web series that a friend of a friend got me very, very into, in which three charming American nerds and a rotating guest player turn the world into the setting for a real-life board game, or similar. Here, the scenery is less the star than the hosts and the silly challenges they take on. In one recent season, the players had to “claim” as many adjacent U. S. states as possible by, for example, sculpting a butter animal (in Iowa), drinking at a bourbon distillery (in Kentucky), or doing time-zone trivia at a Margaritaville (in any state with a Margaritaville). It is, after all, five o’clock somewhere. You can imagine my excitement, then, when I learned about a forthcoming YouTube offering called “The Great American Road Trip.” This one promised not only travel-show vibes but, perhaps, a sprinkling of reality TV, another guilty pleasure of mine.

Photo Credit: A trio of travelers during a hike.  Unsplash / NEOM Travel often pictures the sustainable traveler as part of an earnest tribe that books the eco-lodge and pays a green surcharge. Our evidence strongly suggests this is a misconception. Skift’s research with 74,000 travel consumers in the top 40 outbound markets shows 77% believe travel should benefit communities and the environment, and 24% go further, actively seeking sustainable options and accepting trade-offs to get them.

Photo Credit: Left: Dylan Ratigan, Journalist, Author, and Entrepreneur, Reservations. AI; Center: Eduardo Santander, CEO, European Travel Commission; Right: Moderator: Rafat Ali, CEO/Founder, Skift. They spoke at the Skift Transatlantic Summit 2026 in Dublin, Ireland, France wants international visitors to spend €100 billion a year by 2030, up 29% from last year’s level, without adding to the crowds in Paris and its other best-known cities. The plan relies on longer stays, higher spending per night, and more off-peak travel.