Atlanta airport wait times climbed in the last week amid shutdown

Transportation Security Administration officers are wrapping up their fourth week of working without pay amid a fight over the Department of Homeland Security’s budget.

In the last week, that has shown up in the passenger security waits at airports across the country, including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which last fall employed about 1,200 officers.

Friday should have been a payday.

Between Friday, March 6 and Thursday, March 12, wait times at Atlanta’s domestic main checkpoint surpassed 30 minutes about 19% of the time.

Prior to March 6, that was the case less than 1% of the time, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution review of airport data.

In fact, domestic main wait times had never reached 60 minutes this year until this past Sunday.

While the airport’s wait time tracking system generally displays wait times up to 60 minutes long, actual wait times can exceed that total.

Last Sunday, March 8 specifically, the average domestic main checkpoint waits were 222% higher than the average of all other Sundays of 2026.

The wait times at the Lower North checkpoint were three times longer over the last week than has been typical this year.

The international terminal checkpoint has seen the shortest waits on average, increasing from 3 minutes to nearly 5 minutes.

The department’s pay has been held up since Feb. 14 because of a congressional dispute over the department’s immigration enforcement operations. The budgets of other DHS agencies — including TSA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard — are caught in the crossfire.

Republicans and Democrats each blocked the other party’s proposal to temporarily resolving the standoff on the Senate floor earlier this week, The Associated Press reported.

DHS said Wednesday that more than 300 TSA officers have left the agency during the lapse.

Last Sunday, when TSA reported abnormally long security lines across many major airports, Lauren Bis, the agency’s deputy assistant secretary for public affairs said: “These front-line heroes received only partial paychecks earlier this month and now face their first full missed paycheck, leading to financial hardship, absences and crippling staffing shortages.”

After the department temporarily halted its Global Entry trusted traveler program for the first few weeks of the funding lapse, it announced a restart earlier this week.

The program allows vetted travelers who have paid a fee for the service to use expedited kiosks when entering the United States from abroad.