U.S. Transportation Security Administration officers could get their first full paychecks in more than six weeks as early as today (Monday) after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday instructing the Homeland Security secretary to pay them immediately.
But travel experts and labour leaders said the mammoth security lines at some U.S. airports would not disappear overnight and could linger longer while TSA workers wait for their back pay, airports assess their staffing and Congress remains at odds over funding the Department of Homeland Security.
“Until checks are actually in hands, we might still see some of these staffing issues,” Eric Rosen, director of travel content for The Points Guy, a travel information website. “But (the executive order) is a bit of good news, I think, for both TSA officers as well as the flying public. And hopefully, the money starts flowing quickly and people can get back to work.”
School districts and colleges across the country have upcoming spring breaks, and travel also picks up around holidays like Passover and Easter.
TSA personnel have worked without pay since Feb. 14, when Department of Homeland Security lapsed due to a dispute in Congress over federal immigration operations.
As the record-long partial government shutdown went on, some of the officers who screen passengers and bags called out of scheduled shifts; several thousand missing work on a given day was enough to cause hour-long wait times and closed express lanes at airports in Houston, Atlanta, New Orleans, New York and elsewhere.
Trump signed the executive order after House Republicans rejected a bill passed by the Senate early Friday that would have funded the TSA , the U.S. Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency but not Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.
Caleb Harmon-Marshall, a former TSA officer who runs a travel newsletter called Gate Access, said he doesn’t think the airport staffing situation will improve significantly until officers can be confident they will keep getting paid and won’t have their incomes suspended again due to the lack of agreement in Congress.
Travellers worried about getting through security for upcoming flights should plan on longer lines for another week or two, Harmon-Marshall estimated.
Assessing staffing shortages
Airports that saw passengers standing in screening lines that clogged check-in areas or showing up far too early for their flights will need to decide whether to reopen checkpoints or expedited service lanes they closed or consolidated due to inadequate staffing.
A handful of airports experienced daily TSA officer callout rates of 40%. Nationwide on Thursday, more than 11.8% of the TSA employees on the schedule missed work, the most so far, the department said Friday.
Nearly 500 of the agency’s nearly 50,000 officers have quit since the shutdown started, according to DHS. TSA Acting Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill told lawmakers on Wednesday that some of the ones who missed shifts in recent weeks might leave as well. Hiring is likely to be harder after the personal and public disruptions the shutdown has caused, she said.
Aviation security expert Sheldon Jacobson, whose research contributed to the design of TSA PreCheck, said he doesn’t think travellers with trips planned need to panic. The 3- and 4-hour wait times in Atlanta, Houston and New Orleans were outliers, he said.
“At a lot of the airports I look at, the delays are pretty typical,” he said.
Jacobson also noted that the number of TSA officers who quit since mid-February isn’t much higher than the normal attrition rate for the job, which is around 8%.
How to monitor wait times
Check airport conditions early and often, including official websites and social media accounts where airports share timely updates and guidance, according to experts.
Many airports on Saturday urged passengers to allow at least four hours for both domestic and international screenings.
“Wait times can change quickly based on passenger volume and TSA staffing,” according to an advisory posted Saturday morning on the website of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
Wait times listed on the MyTSA mobile app may not be accurate because TSA isn’t actively managing its sites during the shutdown. On third-party websites that track TSA lines, estimated wait times could be outdated during the shutdown if they rely on publicly available data, experts say.
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