Nearly HALF of TSA agents call out at America’s busiest airports as lines stretch for almost five hours and travel chaos worsens
Travelers are waiting in 270-minute-long queues at America’s busiest airports after nearly half the Transportation Security Administration officers called off work.
Wait times have reached nearly five hours at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas after 42 percent of TSA staff called out Tuesday.
Security queues snaked around the Houston airport and through an underground tunnel as staff warned travelers whose flights were departing ‘soon’ that they ‘may not clear security in time,’ CNN reported.
Nearly 50 percent of staff at Houston’s Hobby Airport called off Monday, but chaos has since calmed at the Southwest hub with security wait times currently estimated at being 10 minutes or less.
Staffing shortages are plaguing airports across the US after hundreds of thousands of Homeland Security workers – including those from the TSA – have continued to work without pay since Congress failed to renew DHS funding last month.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has advised travelers to allow ‘at least four hours or more’ for security screenings for both domestic and international flights but were unable to offer an exact TSA wait time on Tuesday morning.
ICE agents descended on Hartsfield-Jackson, which is the busiest and biggest airport in the US, to assist with security screenings after TSA callouts exceeded 40 percent Tuesday morning, according to WRDW.
Wait times at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport reached nearly an hour Tuesday morning, with the airport citing the ‘federal funding lapse’ as the reason that ‘security wait times may be significantly longer than normal.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15674265/tsa-agents-callout-houston-airports-chaos.html