After almost six weeks of partial government shutdowns that have caused record-high security line wait times at airports across the country during peak spring break season, travelers should still keep in mind that it could take a few weeks or potentially over a month for lines to return to normal.
A Transportation Security Administration officer at the Indianapolis International Airport told HuffPost that even though the Senate passed funding for parts of Homeland Security on Friday morning, and the House is expected to vote on it as soon as Friday, affected airports will not immediately revert to normal until TSA officers see their paychecks. The TSA officer asked to remain anonymous to ensure their management did not know they were speaking to the press.
“Most people who can’t come in, [it’s] probably for financial reasons, and it wouldn’t change until money is in the account,” the agent said, referring to TSA agents. “Some unlucky folks may fight tooth and nail to get their paycheck, as I know two officers [who] never got their back pay from the 43-day shutdown.”
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Another TSA agent at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, who also asked to remain unnamed, emphasized that the timing depends entirely on their paychecks.
“It depends on how quickly we get our missing pay,” they told HuffPost. “Last shutdown, it took a week or two after they got themselves sorted.”
The slow recovery makes sense, given the scale of the staffing crisis. More than 450 TSA agents have quit since the partial government shutdown began on Feb. 14, which has caused the “highest wait times in TSA history, with some wait times greater than four and a half hours,” Ha Nguyen McNeill, the acting head of the TSA, told a House committee on Wednesday. On Monday, DHS said more than 30% of TSA workers reportedly called out from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, Baltimore’s BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport, Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.
“If [it’s] an airport with a high [call-out] rate and no people quit, then you’re looking at when the paycheck arrives at the latest,” the Indianapolis agent said of when wait times may get back to typical levels. “But if it’s an airport with a lot of fired workers or quits, then it may take a month or more, depending on that airport’s hiring queue.”
Expedited programs like TSA PreCheck also experienced increased wait times over the last few weeks — but it’s likely members will see faster lines sooner.
“PreCheck at [Indianapolis] stays the priority,” the Indianapolis TSA agent said. “From my experience, they probably would try to get PreCheck open to good times, and standard times would probably take a dip until TSO numbers replenish.”
Why did this shutdown happen?
The Senate failed to approve funding for Homeland Security during a vote in February, leaving the DHS without funding for its 2026 budget to pay workers like TSA agents at airports.
Lawmakers were not able to agree on how to allocate spending for airport security, disaster relief, and other national security areas. The divide stemmed from Democrats demanding reforms for Immigration and Customs Enforcement after two U.S. citizens were killed in Minneapolis earlier this year by the federal agents.
TSA officers are considered essential workers, which is why, for the last 40 days, the shutdown has forced agents to show up to work without pay. This has led to high rates of staff members quitting, which in turn has resulted in significantly longer security wait times at major airports.
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