Expect Longer Security Lines at the Airport During Government Closings
If you have an upcoming flight, you can make yourself a little more time at the airport.
TSA agents are among the government officials who are asked to work for free during the stop. Now that the second week of the outage is ending, many of these TSA employees are being called to work due to illness, leaving some major airports unmanned.
For example, at JFK in New York, more than 170 TSA employees called every day this week. 170 people a day .
Calls also increased 200-300% at Dallas-Fort Worth airports and 10% more at North Carolina’s Raleigh Durham and Charlotte airports, CNN reported .
Many employees are forced to call because they can no longer afford unpaid childcare, or they need to use the time they will work for TSA to earn money that they can use to pay rent or other living expenses.
This means that if the shutdown continues, the situation is bound to worsen.
This also means that if you have a flight while the stopover is still in progress, it is in your best interest to arrive at the airport early. Fewer TSAs will undoubtedly mean longer lines. Some airports may also decide to close the TSA pre-screening line to consolidate forces on a larger general line.
For now, I personally recommend getting to the airport a full two hours before your flight is due to depart, in case you run into problems when trying to go through security. There’s definitely a chance you can still get through quickly, but arriving at your gate an hour early is much better than being 10 minutes late.