While TSA officers on the front lines of airports across the nation continue to miss their paychecks, chaos is gripping some US airports.
Footage from the Philadelphia International Airport, shot early Thursday morning, shows hundreds of passengers waiting on elevators and escalators to get through a security checkpoint.
The airport announced it was temporarily closing three security checkpoints “to help optimize operations across other checkpoints,” starting Wednesday.
The Philadelphia International Airport has a total of six main checkpoints — now with just half of those points open and operating.
An airport spokesperson told Fox News Digital that airport staff were on hand to direct flight passengers through the lines.
“The longest wait time was 44 minutes at our D/E checkpoint, which opens at 3 a.m., the first checkpoint to open,” said the spokesperson.
TSA wait times are posted on the Philadelphia International Airport’s website.
As of 9 a.m., the longest wait time was at the airport’s Terminal B checkpoint, at 20 minutes — which the spokesperson said was “not unusual for this time of day.”
The spokesperson added that the closure of three checkpoints was “due to TSA staffing constraints caused by the partial government shutdown.”
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has had lines as long as 90 minutes, with the airport posting on X to alert travelers to arrive three hours early.
“According to TSA projections, ATL expects nearly 350K travelers from Thursday, March 19, through Sunday, March 22,” the airport wrote on X.
Acting Deputy TSA Administrator Adam Stahl told Fox News Digital this week that as the shutdown drags on, the TSA faces the risk of losing even more officers.
“The reality is [that] as this continues, as our officers continue not to receive a paycheck, it just stretches into weeks … [and] rates [of callouts] are going to continue to go up,” said Stahl.
“We’re going to have individuals that can’t afford to go into work and individuals quit, possibly altogether.”
So far, 366 TSA officers have quit during the shutdown, while there was a national callout rate of 10.19% on Sunday, a TSA spokesperson told Fox News Digital this week.
“We’re determining [airport and security line closures] based on staffing, but we have federal security directors on the ground who are experts in their particular airport, the configuration, demographic, and travel and patterns tied to that [respective] airport,” he also said.
