TSA is a mess at several airports — but most others are just fine

• Spring break demand, paired with the partial government shutdown, has led to long TSA lines.
• New Orleans and Houston Hobby airports saw security lines of two to three hours.
• Other airports, including Houston's other city airport, haven't experienced the same chaos.

Another day, another dose of air travel confusion.

Reports of multi-hour airport security lines spread quickly online this weekend as the partial government shutdown drags on and spring break travel picks up — but, for now, the chaos appears concentrated at just a handful of airports.

Houston Hobby Airport and Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport are the hardest hit, with peak wait times up to three hours reported in the general line on Sunday and Monday.

Social media posts from both airports and the Department of Homeland Security cited a shortage of Transportation Security Administration agents, who are running the checkpoints without pay for the second time in under four months.

Photos and videos shared online show the general security queue in Houston backed up to the parking garage on Sunday. Even expedited security lines, including TSA PreCheck and Clear, were snaking through the terminal or closed altogether.

By comparison, most other airports — including Houston's larger airport, George Bush Intercontinental — haven't seen the same disruptions. Industry experts say Hobby and New Orleans may simply be outliers where agent absences came at a moment of high volume.

Sally French, a travel analyst at Nerd Wallet, told Business Insider that New Orleans and Houston Hobby are in particularly high demand right now: "New Orleans is coming off Mardi Gras, and Houston airports are huge for getting to Port Galveston for the spring break cruises."

Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst and the president of Atmosphere Research Group, said the seemingly localized disruptions could be due to several factors, like randomness, targeted disruptions by frustrated workers, or the union encouraging officers to call out.

Harteveldt didn't rule out that the Department of Homeland Security itself — whose funding expired in February as part of a political fight over aggressive actions by Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — could have organized the chaos at Hobby and New Orleans to get media attention; the DHS official account blamed the lines on Democrats.

"One thing we know that works in getting lawmakers back to the negotiating table is adding long queues at large airports, especially in major cities that are leisure and business hot spots," Harteveldt said. "It becomes television news, but it's not good for anybody."

Spokespeople for the DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Previous shutdowns, including those under President Donald Trump in 2018-2019 and in 2025, ended partially after mass absences by TSA agents and air traffic controllers temporarily halted traffic in busy markets like New York City. This time, however, air traffic controllers are still getting paid.

Longer queues aren't unusual during peak travel periods

The longest line at Houston's larger airport, George Bush Intercontinental, was 51 minutes on Sunday, a TSA official told Business Insider. Airports like Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Charlotte Douglas International Airport were also seeing long but less severe queues of about an hour.

That's not unusual during peak spring break — especially on a Sunday, already the busiest travel day of the week. TSA data shows that Sunday was its busiest travel day of the year since January 4, screening nearly 2.8 million passengers across US airports.

Atlanta said it was experiencing staffing constraints but also attributed the backups to "residual impacts from two ground stops on Friday." The city reportedly experienced hail that night, and airlines like Delta suspended operations to inspect aircraft.

Atlanta, Charlotte, and Intercontinental — along with other popular spring break gateways such as Miami, Orlando, Los Angeles, and New York — were showing security wait times of 30 minutes or less as of Monday afternoon.

Harteveldt warned, however, that some understaffed airports may not consistently update line times — meaning the projected wait you see online may not be accurate, so budget extra time.

Disruptions could spread to other airports the longer TSA agents work without pay. Data from the US Travel Association, a nonprofit representing the travel industry, shows a record 171 million people are expected to pass through US airports in March and April this year.

It said nearly 50,000 TSA agents — who earn an average of $35,000 a year — will receive their first full $0 paycheck on Saturday unless Congress reaches a deal to fund DHS before then.

"They're showing up. They're doing their job, and they're not getting paid," Geoff Freeman, the president and CEO of the US Travel Association non-profit group that represents the travel industry, said. "It's not just unfair. It's reckless. You can't run an industry with $3 trillion in economic impact on IOUs."

The TSA told Business Insider that the coming missed paycheck would cause "financial hardship, absences, and crippling staffing shortages." Officers received partial pay at the end of February for work done before the shutdown started and are expected to eventually receive back pay.

The DHS has blamed congressional Democrats for the prolonged shutdown. Democrats have opposed funding the department and said they will not support it until Republicans agree to restrictions on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations.