- Getting through airport security in the US is like playing roulette right now.
- Some travelers are missing flights after hours in line, and having to spend the night in the airport.
- Others are budgeting hours for TSA chaos — and then sailing through the line in minutes.
Bazela Malik was in New York City to celebrate Eid with her family. Her journey back to Fort Lauderdale turned into a more than 24-hour ordeal, involving two missed flights, several Ubers, a walk in the rain, and a sleepless night.
She is one of millions of people who have endured nightmare travel days as the partial government shutdown has thrown US air travel into chaos.
But not all chaos is created equal — and more than a month after TSA agents started calling out of work due to missed paychecks, disrupting the flow of travelers through airports, passengers are playing an unwelcome game of roulette.
Some are arriving at the airport hours early, only to find minimal delays and to breeze through security. Others are waiting for hours in snaking queues only to miss their flights.
One of the problems at play is that it's been nearly impossible to predict which airports will have long lines, and when. TSA callouts at some major airports have been as high as 40%, resulting in major disruption; Atlanta and Houston George Bush airports have both warned of 4-hour delays for days. Other airports, meanwhile, have been able to keep operations running more smoothly — Las Vegas Harry Reid Airport, for instance, has seen minimal lines.
As a result, many travelers don't know how early to show up at the airport. Further complicating matters, hubs like JFK, Newark, and Atlanta have suspended real-time TSA wait-time tracking on their sites. The My TSA app, while spiking in downloads, is not fully functional during the partial government shutdown.
"The uncertainty and lack of reliable information" was the "worst part of the experience," Cora Bravo, a journalist who flew from New York to Mexico City on Tuesday, told Business Insider.
"The official wait times didn't match reality, and people in line didn't really know what was happening or how long it would take."
Chaos in the TSA line — sometimes
Malik's nightmare trip began when she missed her JetBlue flight from LaGuardia on Sunday evening because she was stuck in a three-hour security line. Her next flight, around 6 a.m. on Monday, was canceled because of the Air Canada plane crash that led to LaGuardia being shut down.
Unable to get a taxi at LaGuardia, she walked in the rain to a pickup spot, caught a cab to JFK Airport, waited for six hours at the airport, and finally caught an afternoon JetBlue flight back to Fort Lauderdale, where she works as a hotel accounting manager.
"When you go on break from work, you just want to relax," she said. "But the whole experience made me feel very stressed out."
Many airports are facing staffing shortages as more Transportation Security Administration agents call out of work. While the shutdown began on February 14, the situation was exacerbated when TSA agents missed their first full paycheck earlier this month.
While Republicans want billions more in funding for the Department of Homeland Security, Democrats want to see reforms of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, following January's violence in Minnesota.
Friday is a key deadline. Not only does it mark another missed paycheck for TSA staff, but it's also the last day Congress is scheduled to be in session before a two-week break.
'The line was eating itself'
For New York-based advertising copywriter Megan Walsh, the TSA chaos came at a really bad time.
Stuck in the TSA queue at LaGuardia before her flight to New Orleans for her sister's bachelorette party on March 18, she got a call from her company's HR and CEO, who informed her that she had been laid off.
"My legs were shaking because I was so scared about the call, and I couldn't get through the line in time," Walsh said, saying it was a terrible time to get the news.
The bachelorette trip was a good distraction for her, she said, but the travel chaos picked back up when it was time to head back to NYC on Sunday. Arriving at the airport more than four hours before her American Airlines flight, the staff pointed her and her friend Laura Rozner to the garage, where the queue began.
"You know the game, 'Snake?' It was like that — the line was eating itself," she said. "We couldn't figure out where the end of the line was; there were loops and loops of people."
Rozner, a marketing manager based in NYC, said she didn't think to pack food or drinks. By the end of the four-hour wait, she was hungry and stressed. She made it to the gate 30 minutes before boarding.
Madison Terry, a small-business owner from Atlanta who was traveling to Florida with her 1-year-old twins on Delta Air Lines on Saturday, said she'd never been so anxious on a travel day.
"There were moms who had to ask people to hold their spots so they could get water for their babies, older gentlemen with canes who had to pee, a student crying because she'd missed her exam," Terry said.
Rebecca Bendheim, an author from Austin, said she was traveling to Colorado with her fiancée for a family ski trip. Their journey was so delayed that she said her family of 14 gave them a standing ovation when they finally arrived.
Others are cruising through airports
Some travelers managed to strike the TSA lottery.
Shayna Macklin, an NYC-based marketing director, said she arrived at JFK five hours early for her Delta Air Lines flight to Nevada because she expected to wait in line.
Macklin, who said she has TSA PreCheck Touchless ID and CLEAR, said she got through security in three minutes.
"I absolutely expected to be waiting in line for hours," she said.
"I will say that I did feel a bit uneasy, but was grateful that I had a good experience going through security and that my flight left on time," Macklin said.
Abby Cox, a teacher from Alabama, arrived seven hours before her flight from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Tuesday. While the airport warned of four-hour lines, she said she got through in under 45 minutes.
"I have a medical condition where I cannot hold my bladder, so I was very anxious about the bathroom situation," Cox said. "I consider myself very fortunate to have gotten through so quickly, and I had no problem waiting at a gate for 6 hours."
ICE agents in airports and airline CEOs losing patience
With scores of TSA agents not showing up for work, the DHS has deployed ICE agents across 14 US airports to fill some of the gaps. ICE agents aren't doing any of the TSA's key security screening work, but have been managing lines and directing passengers.
Flight attendants' unions have slammed this step. "TSA workers must be paid now," they said in a joint statement Sunday.
Airline CEOs are losing patience, too. Earlier this month, they signed a letter from the Airlines for America trade group that called on political leaders to "immediately" reach an agreement. "Then they need to act so this problem never happens again," it added.
"Once again, air travel is the political football amid another government shutdown," the letter said.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, one of the signatories, also told CBS News: "It's just ridiculous to me that it has to get bad before they can get a deal done."
"Please get the deal done soon."
