US airport wait times a non-issue for most (for now)

I've got a little less than one month before my next flight comes, so that will be interesting. But it's nice to know that MSP looks pretty good right now.

I don't see a source for this data so I would be careful placing full reliance on it

And IMHO the longer this goes on the worse it will get. How long would any of us work without pay?

If you look down at the Notes at the bottom, Carol, you will see that the New York Times sources its information from the airports.

Notes: All wait times shown are as reported by airports on their websites. Some major airports did not provide live wait times. In cases in which a wait time is reported by the airport as a range, the higher number is used. All times are Eastern.

I would just say that several people on the ground have said over the past several days that the reported times on line have no relation to what they are seeing and living in real life

I didn’t know they got special treatment

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/24/delta-airlines-congress-dhs-shutdown-tsa.html

They indeed do. I once sat next to then Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil on a flight from D.C. to Chicago. I was in 1A. He was in 1B. He asked the flight attendant for an aspirin and she gave him one. He was the first off the flight and was met by a United agent who carried his briefcase and escorted him.

The capacity of a system is constrained by its slowest moving component. Here that is likely the x-ray queue. Any airport that can keep open the needed number of x-ray queues to meet demand should be fine. It's when they can't staff a queue that the line builds.

Think of another part of an airport. If you have 2 runways, you are constrained by how many takeoffs and landings those two runways can handle. If a runway goes down, adding hundreds of more ground crew or even dozens of air traffic controllers does nothing== delays will build.

Same with TSA. If you lose an x-ray lane because you don't have the trained staff, the line will build no matter how many other folks you add to TSA. Many/most airports still have this under control for most of the day but some are struggling with the staffing.

Let's hope it ends soon.

Happy travels.

I would just say that several people on the ground have said over the past several days that the reported times on line have no relation to what they are seeing and living in real life

I saw a news report that said the same thing.

Our daughter and her family are heading out of MSP on Monday. She got a TSA appointment for probably earlier than they needed, but better safe than sorry.

We fly tomorrow evening to Amsterdam ending in Lyon from Orlando. Will see what that looks like. Its huge spring break travel time there…but not likely internationally. We will definitely arrive earlier than the 3 hour time suggestion. Last year we were stuck in Amsterdam 12 hrs waiting for our connecting flight to Berlin. Hoping not this time!

If you do a Google news search about TSA lines in airports you will discover that a few days ago, a very few airports were having significant problems. Very significant. Reading today, those airports are better than they were 2 days ago and manageable.

The media knows panic sells clicks.

My husband flew domestic from ATL last Sun and yesterday.(Wed) If his flight had not been delayed, he would have missed it on Sunday. He said it was better yesterday. He does have CLEAR and Pre-check-I'm wondering if CLEAR was closed on Sunday.

Our daughter and her family flew out of MSP, Terminal 2 this morning. They were able to get through their appointment early. She said the regular line was moving normally.

toby, thanks. Less than a week ago the lines at IAH were 4 hours, now 10 minutes. I found the same report on 3 different Houston news outlets. I guess most all of the TSA went back to work when they heard they would get paid. Happy for them. Good to hear.