For example, the airport with the longest wait at the time of writing is Houston’s IAH, which has an estimated wait time of 250 minutes (or more than four hours) and only has two of its nine checkpoints open. If you have to get to Tulsa, you might just want to drive instead, but if you’re headed to Maine, best of luck, because you’re most likely going to need it. On the other hand, if you’re flying out of Houston’s HOU, both security checkpoints are reportedly open, and the wait is less than 10 minutes.
At the time of writing, the tool also shows 11 airports reporting wait times of 15 minutes or less, and the good news is, that list isn’t exclusively small, regional airports. In descending order of estimated wait times, MIA, PHX, DFW, HOU, DCA, BWI, MSP, DTW, CLT, LAX, and DEN are all reporting sub-20-minute waits. Of course, in another day or two, everything could flip, and the airports with long waits today could end up being the ones with short waits tomorrow. So don’t assume you’re good to go just because your airport looks good right now.
I’ll also apologize for using airport codes that most regular travelers don’t have memorized and making this post a little less infrequent-traveler-friendly, but with such drastic differences in wait times between airports in even the same city, I wouldn’t want someone flying out of HOU to hear there’s a long wait at the Houston airport and decide to cancel their flight, even though the real problems are at IAH today.
Hopefully, you can simply stay home and avoid the mess, but if not, keep an eye on From The Tray Table’s TSA wait time tracker. At least as long as your airport doesn’t pull an ATL and give up on reporting wait times. That would suck for more reasons than just not knowing how long it’ll take to get through security.
