The partial government shutdown is causing airport delays across America

Airport security lines have once again become the clearest visual of political gridlock — a long, slow-moving reminder that Washington’s abstract budget fights eventually end up in somebody’s carry-on. With TSA screeners working without pay as a result of the partial government shutdown, waits stretched as long as three and a half hours, turning spring-break travel into a very literal bottleneck.

The result has been missed flights, delayed departures, and a lot of rope-line misery.

On Sunday, Houston Hobby’s airport system told travelers to budget four to five hours before departure, and Houston Airports director Jim Szczesniak offered the obvious: “When more passengers meet fewer security lanes, wait times can grow quickly.” The airport was still facing snarls and three-hour delays on Monday.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, New Orleans’ airport warned passengers to arrive at least three hours early and said delays could linger through the week. Spring break travel met a Washington funding mess, and the result looked like a country trying to run a major transportation network on crossed fingers. 

TSA said longer-than-average lines were also reported at George Bush Intercontinental, Charlotte Douglas, and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta. Airports can usually survive weather, software glitches, and the occasional holiday stampede. What they handle less smoothly is a security workforce being asked to keep the whole machine upright — for free.

On Feb. 13, funding for the Department of Homeland Security lapsed, leaving about 50,000 TSA screeners working without pay, after Congress failed to reach a deal on immigration-enforcement reforms.

Now, TSA workers are headed toward their first zero paycheck on March 13 (after only receiving a partial paycheck on Feb. 27), meaning the country’s airports are running on patriotic fumes, and the agency is already carrying scar tissue from the last shutdown: The TSA’s top official told Congress last month that about 1,110 transportation security officers left in October and November after last fall’s 43-day shutdown, more than 25% above the same period a year earlier. The agency said that many of those departures were tied to uncertainty, missed paychecks, and financial strain.

Travel groups have been warning for days that delays were the obvious pressure point. TSA officers screen nearly a billion passengers a year, and the U.S. Travel Association says they earn about $35,000 on average — not exactly the kind of salary that leaves room for Washington to play chicken with workers’ rent.

TSA was already supposed to be surging staffing for March, April, and May to handle spring break and summer demand. Airlines for America says carriers are expecting a record 171 million passengers during the spring travel period (between March 1 and April 30), up 4% from a year earlier, with about 2.8 million travelers a day, 26,000 daily flights, and 3.5 million seats in the market. While spring break has arrived right on schedule, Congress has not.

And travelers are seeing firsthand how even a “partial” shutdown can jam a full airport.