TSA Wait Times Hit Record Four and a Half Hours as Government Shutdown Reaches Day 45 With No Deal in Sight

The Transportation Security Administration is recording the longest wait times in its 24-year history as the partial government shutdown drags into its 45th day. Acting Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill says waits are exceeding four and a half hours at some airports. Staff are calling out at rates of 40–50%. Congress is on a two-week recess.

The United States government has been partially shut down for 45 days. Congress has gone on holiday. And at airports across the country, Americans are waiting longer to get through security than at any point since the TSA was created in the aftermath of September 11.

Acting TSA Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill confirmed that airports are experiencing “the highest wait times in TSA history, with some wait times greater than four and a half hours.” At Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson — the world’s busiest airport — passengers were told to arrive at least four hours before their flights. At Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental, waits hit two and a half hours at midday. LaGuardia in New York pushed past two hours on Monday morning.

The staffing collapse

The root cause is simple: TSA officers have been required to work without pay for six weeks. The result is equally simple: they are not showing up. Callout rates at major airports have surged to 40–50%, according to TSA union officials. Some screeners have taken second jobs to pay their bills. Others have quit entirely.

Trump’s emergency executive order to pay TSA workers, signed last week, has provided some relief. At Atlanta, wait times dropped from four hours to around 25 minutes on Monday morning after paychecks began arriving. But the improvement is patchy. Airports where the pay has not yet reached workers’ accounts are still operating at crisis levels.

A shutdown without precedent

This is now the longest government shutdown in American history, surpassing the 35-day closure in 2018–19 that was itself considered extraordinary. The Department of Homeland Security — which funds TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, ICE, and Border Patrol — has been unfunded since February 15.

Both chambers of Congress have passed DHS funding bills, but they are incompatible. The Senate version funds TSA and FEMA but strips ICE and Border Patrol. The House version does the opposite. Neither chamber will accept the other’s bill, and both have left Washington for a two-week Easter recess without resolving the impasse.

The human cost

Behind the wait-time statistics are real consequences. Thousands of travellers have missed flights. Airlines have reported a 15% increase in rebookings. Business travel to and from the United States has declined measurably, with several international carriers warning of reduced service to American airports if conditions do not improve.

And the TSA officers themselves — the people Americans rely on to keep air travel safe — are working mandatory overtime without guaranteed pay, in understaffed checkpoints, while being screamed at by frustrated passengers. It is a masterclass in how to destroy institutional morale. The shutdown is not just an inconvenience. It is a slow-motion dismantling of the systems that keep the country functioning.