The DHS partial shutdown is entering its fourth week, and 50,000 TSA agents are working without pay. Global Entry kiosks went dark across most airports. And March 8-9, Houston Hobby, New Orleans, Atlanta, and Charlotte reported security lines stretching 3-5 hours.

Spring break starts now. This is what the checkpoint actually looks like, and the tools that can cut your wait in half.

Quick Situation Summary

What’s Happening	Status
TSA agent pay	Withheld — week 4 of shutdown
Global Entry kiosks	Suspended — use staffed CBP lanes
TSA PreCheck lanes	Open and functional
Worst airports March 8-9	HOU, MSY, ATL, CLT — 3-5 hour waits
MyTSA app wait times	Available but crowd-sourced; accuracy varies

Bottom line: PreCheck is your single most valuable card right now. If you have it, use it at every opportunity. If you don’t, the apps and timing strategies below are your next best options.

Why Lines Are So Much Worse Than Normal

TSA is fully staffed on paper. In reality, the shutdown creates two separate problems.

First, morale and reliability. Agents working without a paycheck have higher absenteeism. Not a surprise, but worth understanding: the checkpoint experience depends on staffing levels that aren’t guaranteed right now.

Second, Global Entry suspension means one of the fastest entry pathways no longer functions. Normally, Global Entry members scan their passport at a kiosk, answer a few questions on screen, and are through customs in under two minutes. Those kiosks aren’t running. Every Global Entry member now goes through the same staffed CBP primary inspection lane as everyone else. That’s not a slow lane by normal standards, but it’s far slower than the kiosk, and it hits exactly when airport volumes are at their annual peak.

The result: lines that normally move in 20-30 minutes are backing up to 3-5 hours at airports that handle high leisure travel volume.

TSA PreCheck Lanes: Still Running, Still Worth It

PreCheck lanes are functional. That’s the biggest practical fact right now.

The shutdown affects TSA broadly — pay, morale, call-outs — but the PreCheck lane infrastructure isn’t tied to Global Entry or the broader DHS funding freeze. If you’re enrolled in PreCheck (or Global Entry, NEXUS, or SENTRI, all of which carry PreCheck), you have access to the dedicated lane.

During the March 8-9 peak, social media reports from Charlotte and Atlanta described standard lines at 2-3 hours while PreCheck lanes moved in 15-20 minutes. That gap isn’t unusual when standard lines are backed up. PreCheck volumes are lower and the lane processes faster: no laptop removal, no shoes off, no belt removal, less fumbling.

If you don’t have PreCheck: The TSA website at TSA.gov still shows PreCheck enrollment availability. In-person appointments at enrollment centers can sometimes get you processed in under 48 hours, though known traveler number provisioning to your airline profile takes time. Don’t count on enrolling this week and using it this Friday. But for anyone traveling in the next several weeks, it’s worth checking availability.

If you have PreCheck but your airline doesn’t always display it: Log into your airline’s frequent flyer profile and verify your Known Traveler Number (KTN) is populated. It’s a straightforward field (usually 9 digits), and missing or mistyped KTNs are the most common reason PreCheck doesn’t print on boarding passes. Check before you check in.

MyTSA App: Useful But Know Its Limits

MyTSA is a free, official TSA app with wait time estimates for U.S. checkpoints. Available on iOS and Android.

The wait time feature is crowd-sourced: travelers report their actual wait, and the app aggregates those reports into an estimate. That approach has a real-world ceiling. The data is only as current as the people submitting it. At a major hub during a spring break rush, you might get wait times reported 30-45 minutes ago. That’s often stale enough to be misleading.

What MyTSA does well:

• What to bring and remove at specific airports. This is actually reliable. It pulls from TSA’s own records about which airports use CT scanners (which means you don’t remove laptops) versus older equipment.
• Checkpoint status and closures. If a checkpoint is temporarily shut for a staffing issue, this often appears faster in MyTSA than it does on airport websites.
• Item allowances. Good reference if you’re unsure about a specific item in your carry-on.

What MyTSA doesn’t do reliably during a crisis: give you an accurate number for how long you’ll wait right now. During the March 8-9 spike, users at Atlanta reported the app showing 45-minute estimates while posting photos of lines that were clearly longer.

Use it as a baseline, not a guarantee. Check it when you arrive at the airport and cross-reference it against what you can see physically.

FlightAware and Airport-Specific Tools

FlightAware is primarily a flight tracking tool, but it becomes relevant for security waits in one specific way: departure delays cascading from upstream congestion often reflect airport-wide crowding.

If you pull up your flight on FlightAware and the previous leg of that aircraft is already running 45 minutes late, your gate experience is going to be chaotic regardless of where you are in the security line. Knowing that before you leave for the airport means you can adjust your timing: show up later, or earlier depending on whether you think the plane will board late or rush to make up time.

For current checkpoint wait data, a few airport authorities run better tools than MyTSA:

• Airports Authority tools at major airports (DFW, LAX, ORD, DCA, IAD) often have live checkpoint data embedded in their official apps. These pull from the airport operations center rather than crowd-sourcing and tend to be more accurate.
• Google Maps now surfaces estimated airport security wait times at some airports as part of its “busy times” data layer. Not universally available, but worth checking when you search for your terminal.
• Twitter/X. Not elegant, but searching your airport’s code plus “security line” in the last 30 minutes gives you real-time reports from other travelers. During the March 8-9 spike, the most accurate wait time information came from passengers tweeting photos, not from any official tool.

Global Entry Is Suspended: What to Actually Do

If you have Global Entry, your CBP entry process still works. You just go to the staffed primary inspection lane instead of the kiosk. Bring your passport. Show it to the CBP officer. Answer the same questions the kiosk would have asked. You’re not flagged or penalized; you’re just in a longer physical queue.

The practical adjustment: add 30-60 minutes to your customs estimate for any international arrival during this shutdown period. Flights into Miami, Houston, LAX, and JFK are reporting the longest customs waits because those airports handle the highest international volume.

TSA PreCheck, which you also have if you hold Global Entry, is unaffected. Departures are still fast. It’s the arrival side that’s slower.

For NEXUS and SENTRI holders: same situation. The trusted traveler kiosks at land border crossings are also down. Use the standard vehicle or pedestrian lane. Your nexus card doesn’t speed up the crossing right now.

No timeline has been provided for when kiosks will come back online. CBP has not made public statements about a restoration date, and the shutdown has no announced end date as of March 11.

Timing the Line: When to Show Up

Wait time data from the March 8-9 weekend points to clear patterns:

Worst times at major leisure airports:

• Saturday morning departures, 6-10 AM. This is peak spring break outbound.
• Sunday afternoon, 2-6 PM. Return surges from weekend trips.
• Friday afternoon, 3-7 PM. The start-of-break push.

Relatively manageable:

• Weekday departures before 6 AM. Fewer leisure travelers, lower overall volume.
• Late-night departures after 9 PM. Lines at most airports drop substantially.
• Mid-week departures (Tuesday, Wednesday). Spring break travel is weekend-heavy.
• Early morning Monday. Post-weekend leisure travelers have already cleared out.

If you’re flying into a high-volume airport this week and your schedule has any flexibility, look at whether a red-eye or early morning departure is cheaper. It’ll also be faster at the checkpoint, which has real value right now.

The Packed-Bin Mistake That Adds 10 Minutes

One thing nobody writes about during line crises: the slowdown isn’t just aggregate volume. It’s also individual passengers making the checkpoint slower for everyone behind them.

If you’ve forgotten how stripped-down your carry-on needs to be, especially at airports without CT scanners, here’s the refresher. MyTSA’s “What Can I Bring” tool and the TSA app tell you if your airport uses CT scanners (no laptop removal required). If it doesn’t:

• Laptop out, in its own bin
• Shoes off (unless PreCheck)
• Jacket or bulky outer layer in a bin
• Liquids bag accessible and already out before you reach the belt
• No overpacked personal item that makes the X-ray image unreadable

Bins backed up behind a slow passenger aren’t just that person’s problem. At an already-crowded checkpoint, it ripples backward. During a 3-hour line, that’s the difference between making your flight and not.

Which Airports to Watch This Week

Based on the March 8-9 data and historical spring break patterns:

High alert: Houston Hobby (HOU), New Orleans (MSY), Atlanta (ATL), Charlotte (CLT), Fort Lauderdale (FLL), Orlando (MCO), Las Vegas (LAS).

These airports carry heavy leisure volume and have historically been among the slowest during spring break peaks. The shutdown compounds that.

Relatively buffered: Major business travel hubs (SFO, JFK, ORD) tend to have higher PreCheck participation rates, which offloads volume from standard lanes. They’re still busy but the PreCheck-to-standard ratio works in travelers’ favor.

International arrivals: Any airport with high international arrival volume is where Global Entry suspension hurts most. MIA, IAH, LAX, JFK. Budget extra time if you’re connecting domestic after an international arrival.

Before You Leave for the Airport

This is the actual checklist for flying this week:

• Verify PreCheck KTN is in your airline profile (check the flight confirmation)
• Pull MyTSA before you leave. Note the estimate but don’t rely on it
• Check your flight on FlightAware. If the inbound aircraft is already delayed, that changes your urgency
• Look at your airport’s official app for checkpoint-specific wait data
• Set a Twitter/X search alert for your airport code + “security”
• Pack liquids accessible. Laptop accessible. Clear bins fast.
• Budget 2.5-3 hours before departure at a high-volume leisure airport, 90 minutes with PreCheck

If you’re flying international and returning to the U.S. this week, add an extra hour to your customs estimate regardless of your trusted traveler status. Global Entry kiosks are down, and CBP staffing is running thin under the same shutdown pressures as TSA.

What Doesn’t Help Right Now

CLEAR: CLEAR’s value is bypassing the security line to reach the PreCheck or standard checkpoint faster. With 3-5 hour waits, CLEAR members are cutting to the front of a shorter queue — the ID check — but they’re still subject to the same backed-up physical screening lanes. Some travelers report CLEAR helping significantly; others report it provides only marginal time savings when screening lanes themselves are the bottleneck. At $189/year, it’s not worth buying specifically for this crisis.

Arriving extra early hoping to skip the rush: At the worst-hit airports on peak days, arriving 4 hours early doesn’t get you through faster. It just means you wait in a longer line that forms before yours. Off-peak timing is more effective than simply arriving earlier.

Complaining at the checkpoint: TSA agents working unpaid are under significant strain. The line isn’t their fault. The agents who would normally be handling your lane may be among the absentees. The ones who showed up are doing a harder job under worse conditions. Moving fast through the checkpoint helps everyone, including you.

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For more on what’s changed at U.S. checkpoints this year, the REAL ID enforcement and TSA ConfirmID fee guide covers the $45 alternate verification fee and who needs to act before their next flight. If you’re flying domestic but coming back through international customs, our spring break 2026 last-minute booking guide covers the full picture of what’s disrupted across airports right now.

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TSA and DHS operational status reflects reporting through March 11, 2026. The shutdown situation is active and changing. Verify current checkpoint status at TSA.gov and your airport’s official site before you leave home.