TSA Wait Times Five Weeks Later: Stable Now, Thin Cushion Before Summer 2026

Five weeks after I last wrote about the DHS funding standoff and the wait-time spikes it produced at major U.S. airports, the situation has clarified in some ways and gotten murkier in others. TSA staffing has stabilized at most large hubs, call-out rates are close to pre-shutdown levels, and the post-back-pay improvement that started in late March has largely held through April and the first half of May.

The less reassuring news is that DHS appropriations are still not settled as of mid-May 2026, the attrition the agency took during the first six weeks of the shutdown has not been recovered, and summer 2026 demand is one of the heaviest loads the system has ever absorbed. The FIFA World Cup starts hosting matches across eleven U.S. cities in June, and the structural cushion at TSA is thinner than current headline wait times suggest.

If you are flying domestically in the next sixty days, the system will probably hold; if you are flying through a hub on a summer weekend or a World Cup match day, plan for the buffer you would have built in March.

How wait times actually looked through April and early May

The improvement that began after President Trump signed the late-March back-pay memorandum was real and was the dominant factor in the recovery. Call-out rates at large airports, which had been running roughly 43% above normal during the worst weeks of February and early March, dropped back to within a few points of baseline by the second week of April. Atlanta, which had recorded peak-hour waits over three hours in early March, averaged under twenty minutes at peak by mid-April.

The pattern repeated at most worst-affected airports. Chicago O'Hare, Newark, Charlotte, and Phoenix all returned to roughly normal distributions by the third week of April. The consistent exceptions through early May were Newark Terminal A on weekday mornings, where staffing was still about 15% below pre-shutdown levels, and a handful of midsize airports where attrition fell disproportionately on a small number of certified screeners.

What those numbers do not capture is the workforce underneath. The officers who returned after back pay are largely the same officers who had been working through the shutdown without pay. The ones who left, in most cases, have not returned.

The attrition hangover

TSA confirmed in late April that more than five hundred officers had separated since mid-February, and the separation rate through April and the first half of May was still above the long-run average. Some is normal turnover. Some is a delayed shutdown effect, with officers who endured the no-pay period now leaving as soon as they secure private-sector work.

The agency has resumed hiring, but the certification pipeline for a new screener runs roughly four to six months. The officers TSA is recruiting in May 2026 will not meaningfully relieve the floor until the fall. The summer-peak workforce is, in effect, the workforce TSA already has.

Airlines for America has projected roughly 2.8 million passengers per day across U.S. airports through spring and summer, with weekend peaks above three million. The 2026 FIFA World Cup adds a concentrated demand pulse across eleven host cities between mid-June and mid-July. Higher demand against a thinner certified workforce is the part of the picture that has not stabilized.

Where DHS funding stands as of mid-May

Congress returned from its April recess on schedule, but the appropriations resolution some observers expected within days did not materialize. The Senate version of the DHS funding bill that passed in late March, with ICE funding excluded, was rejected by the House. Conference negotiations have continued in fits and starts since, with sticking points around the ICE enforcement appropriation and Customs and Border Protection overtime funding.

As of mid-May 2026, what is keeping TSA officers paid is the expanded presidential memorandum issued on April 3, which authorized DHS payroll to draw from existing One Big Beautiful Bill Act funds. That memorandum was structured pay-period by pay-period rather than as a permanent fix. The Office of Management and Budget has continued to renew the authorization on a rolling basis, which is the operational reason TSA paychecks have continued to land, and the reason the situation is best described as stabilized rather than resolved. If the OMB authorization were to lapse before a full appropriations deal is in place, the call-out dynamics from February and early March could re-emerge quickly.

What travelers should actually do now

For the next sixty days, the operational guidance is closer to normal heavy-summer protocols than to shutdown contingency. The useful moves remain the trusted-traveler and timing strategies that work in any peak season, plus a slightly larger buffer than in a normal summer.

TSA PreCheck at $78 for five years remains the single best dollar-per-minute investment for a domestic flyer; the program held average wait times under ten minutes for roughly 99% of members even during the worst weeks of the shutdown. CLEAR Plus at $209 a year stacks on top of PreCheck and bypasses the ID-check line at sixty-plus airports, which is where the bottleneck usually re-emerges first when staffing runs thin. Touchless ID, which lets PreCheck members verify identity with a facial match, has expanded to additional airports.

On the card side, the Amex Platinum covers the application fee for Global Entry or TSA PreCheck and includes a CLEAR Plus statement credit, so a single premium card can cover both programs. The Capital One Venture X covers Global Entry or TSA PreCheck reimbursement at a lower annual fee. The Chase Sapphire Reserve also covers the trusted-traveler application fee.

Time-of-day still matters. Midday flights between roughly 10am and 2pm see the lightest checkpoint loads, and Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday remain the lightest travel days. On World Cup host-city match days, I would add at least thirty minutes to whatever buffer the airport's recent average suggests.

Bottom line

The acute crisis I was writing about in mid-April has receded. The structural problem behind it has not. TSA is operating with a smaller certified workforce than it had in February, the DHS appropriations question is still open, and the demand calendar is unusually heavy. For most flyers most of the time, the lines will look normal. For anyone flying through a hub on a peak weekend or a World Cup match day, enroll in PreCheck if you have not already, treat CLEAR Plus as a worthwhile add-on, and arrive with the buffer you would have built during the worst of March.

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