The official story from the Transportation Security Administration is that Donald Trump’s government shutdown isn’t having a big impact on airport security lines, claiming that there’s just a slight increase in airport screeners calling out sick while they’re not being paid, that it’s all a “normal occurrence” at the holidays anyway (note: the holidays are over), and that wait times are mostly fine. That’s not what passengers at New York’s LaGuardia International Airport Sunday afternoon would have said while they were stuck in massive lines:
"I’ve never seen the line in LaGuardia that bad," said John, a frequent business traveler who asked that his last name not be used. "And I probably take the shuttle 40 to 50 times each year, 25 round trips.”
As a reminder, this isn’t an organized sickout by TSA screeners—it’s an accumulation of individual workers needing to go look for other paying work or feeling unable to pay for child care while they aren’t being paid for their work.
Long lines aren't the only shutdown effects flyers might feel, though. The Air Line Pilots Association International is warning that the shutdown could make flying less safe:
"At the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) there are fewer safety inspectors than are needed in order to ensure the air traffic control infrastructure is performing at its peak levels of performance," [union president Captain Joe DePete said. "There are also airline and aircraft manufacturing oversight activities that either stop or are significantly reduced."
"These safety and oversight inspections will potentially allow for the introduction of safety issues that put passengers and airline crews at risk," the union leader went on to say.
With air traffic controllers working unpaid during the shutdown, too, there’s an obvious strain on that critical safety workforce, and ALPA’s warning followed a similar one about understaffing from the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.
