More airports close checkpoints as TSA no-shows rise during shutdown

Airports across the country were starting to buckle Monday under the strain of the partial government shutdown as a rising absentee rate among federal transportation security officers, who are not being paid, led to the closing of checkpoints and increased wait times for travelers.

At George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, the checkpoint in Terminal B remained closed at midday because of a shortage of screening agents, Patrick Trahan, a spokesman for the Houston Airport System, said. On Sunday, Bush Intercontinental became the second big airport to close a main passenger screening portal because of abnormally high absenteeism since the shutdown began on Dec. 22.

On Monday, about one of every 13 screeners nationwide failed to report for work, compared with about one out of 30 a year ago, said Michael Bilello, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration. Bilello said Washington-dulles International and Hartsfield-jackson Atlanta International airports were “exercising contingency plans due to call-outs.”

The TSA’S 51,000 employees were ordered to work without pay during the shutdown. On Friday, they saw their first missed paycheck, a lapse that travel industry officials worried would cause more of them to stay home or quit their jobs, leading to more disruptions for travelers.

Trying to appease the workers, the administrator of the TSA, David P. Pekoske, announced Saturday that he had approved $500 bonuses for the workers and had arranged for them to be paid for any work they performed on the first day of the shutdown, which has lasted 24 days, longer than any previous shutdown of the federal government.

Dulles had a shortage of security agents because of a weekend storm that dropped several inches of snow on the Washington area, said Christina Saull, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.

Saull said the TSA closed one of its two main screening checkpoints at Dulles on Monday morning, but traffic through the airport was “pretty light” and “our longest wait time this morning was only 15 minutes.” She said the checkpoint was expected to reopen by early afternoon.

At Hartsfield-jackson, the nation’s busiest airport, wait times at the main security checkpoint exceeded an hour Monday after the TSA closed “a few security lanes because of the shutdown,” said Elise Durham, a spokeswoman for the airport. At its other checkpoints for domestic travelers, wait times were between 30 and 45 minutes, she said.

“While lines were long this morning, they were moving efficiently,” she added.

On Saturday, Miami International Airport started closing one of its concourses in the early afternoon and diverted flights and passengers to gates in other concourses. Greg Chin, a spokesman for the airport, said the shift was a precaution taken out of concern about too few TSA agents showing up for work.

Chin said there had been no significant impact from the closure of Concourse G, which he said was not scheduled to be repeated after Monday. “Wait times remained normal,” Chin said.

In Houston, Trahan said, the diversion of passengers to other terminals for screening began at 3:30 p.m. Sunday and continued Monday. “We consolidated manpower and shut down just the screening area in Terminal B,” he said.

Customers of United Airlines whose flights were leaving from gates in that terminal had to go to another terminal to clear security and then ride the airport’s skyway train to Terminal B to catch their flights, Trahan said. He said the diversion would continue indefinitely “subject to staffing.”

At the airports that serve New York City, there were no changes in the screening system, according to a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates them.

At Laguardia Airport in New York on Monday morning, travelers were moving swiftly through checkpoints. But TSA workers were anxious about having to keep working with no idea when they will be paid again.

“We are all worried,” said Julio Hernandez, who works for the TSA at Laguardia. “Can you imagine? We are all working without pay. We have no choice.”

Hernandez, 59, a father of four with a mortgage to pay, said he “won’t be able to keep going like this.”

“I may have to ask family for help,” he added. “I don’t know. I’m not there yet. I hope I don’t have to. But that’s all we can do: hope.”