Travelers walk through TSA screening corridors at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Va., on March 30. (Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
March 30, 2026 5:49 PM, EDT
Airport wait times in Houston and Atlanta have eased after Transportation Security Administration officers received most of their missed pay.
At George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, where wait times exceeded four hours last week, passengers were expected to move through security within 10 minutes, according to the airport’s website.
Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson international airport is advising passengers to arrive two hours before their flight time, which is in line with typical guidance. The longest wait time at TSA checkpoints at the airport was about four minutes as of 2 p.m. Eastern Time, that airport’s website said.
And at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, travelers can expect to wait under an hour for general security screenings while those with TSA PreCheck breeze through in less than 30 minutes, according to the airport’s website as of about 2 p.m.
Grace Uvezian, 32, a vice president of marketing at Appetronix, got to JFK multiple hours ahead of her 1:30 p.m. flight after recent reports of long lines. She was greeted by an empty terminal and made her way through security in under 10 minutes — with four hours to spare until her takeoff to Sarasota, Fla.
“I don’t mind sitting and just doing my work in the airport,” Uvezian said. “It’s better to have no line than to be waiting for three to four hours.”
Earlier this month, the longest TSA lines in history stretched for hours at many U.S. airports, forcing flyers to miss their flights and consider other options like taking the train or renting private jets to get to their destinations. The lengthy waits were a result of a Department of Homeland Security funding stalemate in Washington that continues to drag on amid disputes over immigration enforcement policy.
TSA agents had stopped getting paid because of the partial shutdown, prompting many to quit or call out from work. Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said that more than 500 officers left the TSA over the course of the shutdown and that thousands had called out.
President Donald Trump signed a memo March 27 directing TSA personnel to be paid as he tried to alleviate the airport disruptions.
TSA officers have been paid retroactively for their last two pay periods, said Brittany Holder, a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Government Employees, the union that represents TSA workers. But they’re still owed the balance of their first missed paycheck, where some officers earned as little as $13 before the shutdown started, she said.
Bis said DHS is “working aggressively with USDA’s National Finance Center to complete processing for the half paycheck.” She also noted that a small number of employees might see a delay in their payments for several reasons, including bank processing times.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy touted the shorter lines in a social media post on X. “Airport lines across the country are improving because @POTUS has brilliantly stepped in,” he said. “Now we need DEMOCRATS to do their job and fund DHS.”
Airport lines across the country are improving because @POTUS has brilliantly stepped in to help a crisis created by DEMOCRATS refusing to pay @TSA workers!
Thank you to @ICEgov for the work you’re doing here. Now we need DEMOCRATS to do their job and fund DHS 💵✈️ https://t.co/bNmGJbUCSo
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) March 30, 2026
Congress recessed for a two-week break on Friday after failing to reconcile differences between separate House and Senate bills to fund DHS. The Senate proposal would fund most of the department, excluding the immigration agencies at the center of a debate over the aggressive tactics, while the House version would fund all of the department, but only through May 22.
