Another week, another airline has a meltdown with delayed and canceled flights.
Well, that may not be 100% true, but between staffing shortages, weather, maintenance and what have you, and then having to recover from the same, well, it seems as if airlines are having more and more problems.
It’s not just airlines though. Airports can have their own delays, as well.
The TSA maintains a list of wait times at the security checkpoints at airports across the country – you can check the wait times via the MyTSA app. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) also keeps tabs on how long the wait is for incoming passengers at the passport control areas of international airports.
So it didn’t take long for someone to see which airports get people through those queues fast and which ones…don’t.
Bounce, a luggage storage app, dug in with both hands to figure out which airports were quick to get people through and which seemed to take forever. Spoiler: the longest waits were upwards of 14 times as long as their corresponding shortest waits.
The data is published for each hour of the day and day of the week, so they took an average for each airport, looking at flights between March 8th, 2021, and March 7th, 2022.
Note that all wait times are estimates and may not be indicative of any individual’s experiences. They also don’t take TSA Pre-Check, CLEAR or Global Passport into consideration – the time measurements were all “the regular lines.”
Longest Wait Times at TSA Security Checkpoint
3. San Francisco International Airport
Avg. security wait time: 27 minutes, 48 seconds
2. St. Louis Lambert International Airport
Avg. security wait time: 28 minutes, 48 seconds
1. Palm Beach International Airport
Avg. security wait time: 36 minutes, 18 seconds
Shortest Wait Times at TSA Security Checkpoint
3. Four-way tie:Sacramento International AirportAustin-Bergstrom International AirportSan Antonio International AirportCincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport
Avg. security wait time: 8 minutes, 18 seconds
2. Ontario International Airport
Avg. security wait time: 6 minutes, 18 seconds
1. Newark Liberty International Airport
Avg. security wait time: 5 minutes, 18 seconds
Longest Wait Times at Passport Control
3. O’Hare International Airport
Avg. wait time: 20 minutes, 8 seconds
2. Miami International Airport
Avg. wait time: 22 minutes, 3 seconds
1. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport
Avg. wait time: 28 minutes, 23 seconds
Shortest Wait Times at Passport Control
3. Raleigh-Durham International Airport
Avg. wait time: 6 minutes, 3 seconds
2. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport
Avg. wait time: 5 minutes, 46 seconds
1. Palm Beach International Airport
Avg. wait time: 2 minutes, 24 seconds
Longest Overall Wait Times
3. San Francisco International Airport
Avg. security wait time: 27 minutes, 48 secondsAvg. passport control wait time: 18 minutes, 8 secondsCombined wait: 45 minutes, 56 seconds
2. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport
Avg. security wait time: 18 minutes, 18 secondsAvg. passport control wait time: 28 minutes, 23 secondsCombined wait: 46 minutes, 41 seconds
1. Miami International Airport –
Avg. security wait time: 24 minutes, 54 secondsAvg. passport control wait time: 22 minutes, 3 secondsCombined wait: 46 minutes, 57 seconds
Shortest Overall Wait Times
3. Charlotte Douglas International Airport
Avg. security wait time: 9 minutes, 54 secondsAvg. passport control wait time: 9 minutes, 21 secondsCombined wait: 19 minutes, 15 seconds
2. Baltimore/Washington International Airport
Avg. security wait time: 10 minutes, 12 secondsAvg. passport control wait time: 9 minutes, 2 secondsCombined wait: 19 minutes, 14 seconds
1. Raleigh-Durham International Airport
Avg. security wait time: 10 minutes, 6 secondsAvg. passport control wait time: 6 minutes, 3 secondsCombined wait: 16 minutes, 9 seconds
You can go to this page of Bounce’s website to see the full results.
Of course, you can use the aforementioned TSA PreCheck or CLEAR to get you through the TSA checkpoint queue faster. At some airports, you also have this other option to allow you to skip part of the line, no membership required, and it’s free or cheap! And, of course, Global Entry is an option to get you through the queues faster. Best of all, you don’t even have to be an American to get any of those memberships.
Feature Photo (cropped): scottbeale.org / laughingsquid.com
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