Philadelphia International Airport announced it was temporarily closing two more Transportation Security Administration checkpoints starting Wednesday due to ongoing TSA staffing shortages.
This is the latest major American airport to cut back on security checkpoints as TSA workers, who missed their first full paycheck over the weekend due to the ongoing partial government shutdown, have increasingly been absent from work.
The announcement of the closures of TSA checkpoints at terminals A-West and F came less than a week after the Philadelphia airport shut down the Terminal C checkpoint on Thursday, creating a bottleneck and lengthy delays for thousands of travelers trying to catch their flights.
As of around 4 p.m. Wednesday, with the three targeted TSA checkpoints closed, wait times at the remaining checkpoints weren’t too backed up, ranging from two to 17 minutes, according to the PHL website.
But the evening rush of flights out of Philadelphia was just beginning.
Acting Deputy TSA Administrator Adam Stahl told NBC News on Monday that wait times at U.S. airport security checkpoints can vary from day to day depending on how many workers show up for work.
For example, at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston on Monday morning, wait times for getting through TSA security ranged from three to 45 minutes, according to the IAH website.
At Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, one of the nation’s busiest airports, the Airline Airport website was reporting TSA security checkpoint wait times of 10 to 25 minutes Wednesday afternoon, but the website notes those wait times can fluctuate and travelers are urged to “arrive 2-3 hours before departure.”
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who is locked in a competitive Republican runoff for his Senate seat, introduced a bill this week that called the End Special Treatment for Congress at Airports Act that takes aim at a congressional travel perk.
If passed, it would stop members of Congress from getting “courtesy escorts” or preferential treatment when going through TSA security at airports.
While most TSA workers are considered essential workers and are required to show up even when they’re not being paid, the number of unscheduled callouts has more than doubled at many key airports across the country since the start of the Department of Homeland Security shutdown last month, the agency has reported.
At least 366 fed-up TSA workers have already quit rather than work for diminished pay or no pay at all, according to DHS.
Over the weekend, there was a surge in reported TSA staffing issues.
DHS reported more than 100 incidents where shortages threatened “operational integrity” at U.S. airports and caused waits of more than an hour for thousands of travelers trying to get through TSA security.
Hardest hit was Houston’s Hobby Airport, which reported a 55% callout rate Saturday.
That, according to DHS, was the highest TSA worker callout percentage since the agency’s funding expired in mid-February.
The crisis was sparked after lawmakers locked horns over the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, much of which has been enforced by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
Democrats, angered by the killings of two Americans in Minneapolis by federal agents, are seeking reforms to rein in those agencies before they approve funding. But Republicans and the White House have insisted that changes have already been made in response to the killings.
The impasse has triggered the partial shutdown of the department, which also affects the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard. The shutdown does not affect ICE or the administration’s other immigration enforcement operations.
