The payroll math ran out April 19. According to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s April 22 statement covered by CNN, the $10 billion emergency fund keeping TSA agents paid has $1.4 billion left. DHS payroll runs $1.6 billion every two weeks. The money is gone the first week of May.

This isn’t a repeat of the spring break chaos. It’s the harder version. March lines hit up to 4.5 hours (longest in TSA’s 24-year history) and recovered only because the emergency fund was still liquid enough to backstop paychecks. That backstop is gone now. And when May’s cliff arrives, summer travel is already ramping up, with the FIFA World Cup kicking off June 11 across 11 US cities.

Quick Situation Summary

Factor	Status
TSA emergency fund remaining	~$1.4B as of April 19
DHS payroll per cycle	$1.6B every two weeks
Payroll exhaustion	First week of May (per Secretary Mullin, April 22)
TSA officers quit since February	838+
March 2026 peak wait times	Up to 4.5 hours — TSA’s worst ever
FIFA World Cup US kickoff	June 11, 2026
New officer training time	4-6 months — no quick fix

Bottom line: TSA PreCheck is still the single most valuable card in your wallet. Everything else — timing, apps, checkpoint strategy — is secondary to that.

Why the May Cliff Hits Harder Than March

During the initial funding lapse in February and March, the emergency fund was still active. Officers eventually got paid, morale partially recovered, and by early April Atlanta’s checkpoints (which had stretched toward three hours at peak) were back to a few minutes at most. The system proved it could bounce back. But that recovery depended on the paycheck arriving.

The emergency fund is gone in early May. There is no next layer of cushion.

838 TSA officers have quit since mid-February. That attrition doesn’t reverse quickly. Training a new TSA officer from onboarding through checkpoint clearance takes four to six months, which means no surge hiring addresses the May cliff, and nothing addresses the officers who’ve already left before June’s World Cup travel begins.

When paychecks lapse again, call-out rates go back up. During March’s worst days, officer absenteeism hit 40-50% at some airports. That’s not a strike. It’s just the predictable result of asking people to work without pay. The checkpoint experience collapses when even a fraction of scheduled staff don’t show.

What Smaller Airports Are Facing

This particular detail isn’t getting enough attention: when staffing drops below a sustainable floor, TSA’s operational response at smaller airports isn’t to slow down one checkpoint — it’s to consolidate to a single lane, or potentially close a checkpoint entirely and redirect passengers.

That hasn’t happened at scale yet. But it’s the operational lever TSA pulls when headcount craters, and regional airports are the most exposed. A major hub like LAX or ORD has enough redundancy to absorb staffing shortfalls across multiple checkpoints. A smaller airport with one or two lanes doesn’t.

If your departure airport is regional — not a major hub — check with the airport directly in the week before you fly. This is a situation where official airport social media and TSA.gov checkpoint status pages will have more current information than any third-party tool.

The World Cup Timing Is Not Coincidental, Just Bad

The FIFA World Cup runs June 11 through July 19, spread across 16 cities including 11 US host cities: New York/New Jersey, Los Angeles, Dallas, San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, Kansas City, Philadelphia, and Houston.

These are exactly the airports that reported the worst March wait times. They’re also the airports carrying the heaviest summer travel volume. The payroll cliff hits in early May, giving roughly six weeks for the staffing situation to stabilize before World Cup group-stage travel peaks — six weeks with no emergency fund and ongoing officer attrition.

The margin for recovery is thin. Plan as if it doesn’t happen.

The Tools That Actually Help

Get PreCheck Sorted This Week

TSA PreCheck kept its lanes open and moving through the worst of March. Dedicated PreCheck lanes operate independently of standard checkpoint staffing ratios — when standard lines ran 2-3 hours in March, PreCheck lanes at the same airports were moving in 15-20 minutes.

Enrollment costs $85 for five years and takes about 10 minutes online plus an in-person appointment. Known Traveler Number processing can take a few weeks. If you’re flying in the second half of May or June, enroll now — today is not early.

If you already have PreCheck (or Global Entry, NEXUS, or SENTRI, all of which include it), verify your Known Traveler Number is populated in your airline’s frequent flyer profile. It’s a 9-digit number in your reservation management settings. A wrong or missing KTN is the most common reason PreCheck doesn’t print on a boarding pass. Check before you check in, not at the checkpoint.

The My TSA App: Useful If You Know Its Ceiling

The My TSA app (free, iOS and Android) gives crowd-sourced wait time estimates for US checkpoints, plus checkpoint status and airport-specific screening rules.

The wait time data is only as current as the travelers who reported it. During March’s peak, the app was showing 45-minute estimates at Atlanta while passengers posted photos of clearly longer lines. It’s a floor estimate, not a guarantee.

What My TSA does well that matters right now: it tells you whether your airport uses CT scanners — which means you don’t need to remove laptops — versus older equipment that requires it. During a slow checkpoint, individual passengers who fumble bins delay everyone behind them. Know what your airport requires before you get in line.

Use the app at the airport. Cross-reference it against what you can see from the entrance. And for real-time reports during a crisis, a Twitter/X search for your airport code plus “security” in the last 30 minutes will surface more current information than any official tool.

Time Your Departure Around the Worst Windows

During the March staffing collapse, wait times at leisure-heavy airports followed clear patterns. The worst windows:

• Saturday morning departures, 6-10 AM
• Sunday afternoon, 2-6 PM
• Friday afternoon, 3-7 PM

The best windows:

• Weekday departures before 6 AM
• Late-night departures after 9 PM
• Tuesday and Wednesday departures (spring break is weekend-heavy; summer break isn’t, but off-peak timing still helps)

Shifting a departure by a few hours at a high-volume leisure airport often saves more time than any app or strategy. MCO, FLL, LAS, ATL, and HOU are where this timing math matters most.

What Doesn’t Help Here

CLEAR: CLEAR gets you to the front of the identity-verification queue, not through the physical screening lane. During a staffing crisis, the physical lane is the bottleneck. CLEAR members cut to the front of a slightly shorter wait — not the constraint. At $189/year, the CLEAR review walks through where it pays off. This specific situation isn’t it.

Arriving extra early and hoping for the best: At the worst-hit airports on peak days in March, arriving four hours early didn’t skip the rush — the rush had already formed before that. Off-peak timing beats arriving-early-and-hoping every time. If you can’t change your departure time, budget 3+ hours before departure without PreCheck at a high-volume leisure airport, 90-100 minutes with it.

Assuming April’s recovery holds: April’s improvement came from the emergency fund still being active. Remove the fund, and the same dynamics that collapsed March reassert immediately.

Which Airports to Actually Watch

Highest risk for extended waits:

• MCO, FLL, LAS — high leisure volume, historically slow standard lanes
• ATL, CLT — large connecting hubs with complicated staffing dynamics
• HOU (Hobby), MSY — smaller-volume airports where staffing drops hit proportionally harder
• LAX, MIA — World Cup host city airports with summer volume already climbing

Smaller regional airports: Checkpoint consolidation or closure risk is concentrated here. Worth a direct check with the airport in the week before you travel.

Better positioned: Major business-travel hubs (SFO, JFK, DCA) tend to have higher PreCheck participation, which offloads volume from standard lanes. They’re still affected, but the PreCheck-to-standard ratio works in travelers’ favor relative to pure leisure hubs.

How to Prepare for TSA Security in May and June 2026

1. Verify your PreCheck KTN is in your airline profile. Log into your frequent flyer account, find the Known Traveler Number field, confirm the 9 digits are correct. Do this now, not at check-in.
2. Open My TSA at the airport. Use the estimate as a baseline, not a final answer. Check your airport’s CT scanner status so you know what needs to come out of your bag.
3. Check your airport’s official app or website for checkpoint-level status closer to departure — these pull from operations centers rather than crowd-sourced data.
4. Search Twitter/X for your airport code + “security” in the last hour before leaving. Real-time reports from passengers are more current than any tool during a crisis.
5. Pack so you can clear fast. Liquids accessible. Laptop accessible. Jacket accessible. A slow passenger at a backed-up checkpoint ripples backward into everyone else’s wait.
6. Budget time honestly: 3 hours before departure at a high-volume leisure airport without PreCheck. 90 minutes with it.
7. For World Cup flights in June: Add 30 minutes for terminal crowding at host-city airports, even if your actual security wait is normal.

The Honest Outlook

According to reporting by Federal News Network covering Secretary Mullin’s statement, there’s no current legislative fix on the table. No continuing resolution, no new funding package. The most likely May scenario is a checkpoint environment that looks worse than March — fewer officers due to attrition, no emergency fund backstop, more passengers as summer travel begins.

The spring break disruption was covered in the earlier guide when it was happening. That was the preview. What’s coming in May has fewer safety nets and more traffic. PreCheck enrollment now, timing your departures carefully, and knowing what the My TSA app can and can’t tell you — those aren’t optional steps if you have flights booked in the next two months.

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For travelers who still need to sort their ID situation before flying domestically, the REAL ID and TSA ConfirmID guide covers the $45 alternate verification fee and who needs to act. If you’re planning travel to World Cup matches in June, the full World Cup travel guide covers host cities, accommodation strategy, and ground transportation across all 11 US venues.

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TSA and DHS operational status reflects reporting through April 26, 2026. The shutdown and funding situation remain active. Verify current checkpoint status at TSA.gov and your airport’s official site before travel.