BWI Travelers Face Hours-Long TSA Lines, Closed Checkpoints

Robert and Kris Hopkins planned their Sunday departure from Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport using online wait-time trackers, confident they had left enough time to clear security. They missed their flight anyway. "It all got planned out based on the information we saw online about how much time it was going to take to be going through security," Kris Hopkins said. "And it was off by oh — two and a half three hours."

The Hopkins family was not alone. On Sunday afternoon, TSA closed both the A and B security checkpoints as well as TSA PreCheck lanes at BWI, sending lines snaking through terminals and, during the evening rush after spring break, out through the doors of the airport itself. The private biometric screening service Clear continued operating. WBAL estimated the resulting wait at two to three hours; passengers who spoke with CBS Baltimore said they waited more than an hour. Some said they were missing flights and could not rebook until they reached their gates.

BWI issued an alert advising all travelers to arrive at least three hours before their scheduled departure. The airport also temporarily pulled its public wait-time tracker from its website. BWI communications director Jonathan Dean said the removal was temporary "in order to ensure accuracy of the data and information provided to customers." The disconnect between digital estimates and reality had been stark: Newsweek reported the MyTSA app was showing waits of zero to 15 minutes while travelers stood in lines stretching past terminals.

For those who had tried to plan ahead, the advisories offered cold comfort. "Insanity," said traveler Ruth Hammond. "I thought 3 hours would be safe and now I'm very much kind of concerned that I'm actually going to make my flight." Melanie Ferraro took a more drastic step: "Out of the fear I actually bought a second flight a little later, just to make sure I have the greatest chance as possible of flying outbound because they're not certain how long it'll take."

The chaos at BWI unfolded against a national backdrop of TSA staffing erosion tied directly to the partial government shutdown, now in its sixth week. DHS reported that more than 360 TSA officers have quit since the shutdown began in February, according to reporting by Travel Yahoo and Newsweek; WBAL reported the DHS figure at more than 400 departures. Agents who remain have been working without paychecks. CBS Baltimore asked TSA whether there was a staffing shortage at BWI on Sunday; the agency had not responded by Sunday evening.

Passenger Kim Fry, speaking to CBS Baltimore, drew a direct line between the shutdown and the terminal gridlock. "The problem is, they don't have enough TSA agents, and so people have to feed their families," she said. "If they can't, if they're not being paid, they've got to go do something. I mean, that's just reasonable. ICE is not going to help with that at all."

Her skepticism about ICE came after President Trump said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could be sent to airports to assist in security efforts as early as Monday if the shutdown remained unresolved. Officials announced ICE would begin deploying to airports starting Monday, March 23, though reporting noted that ICE would not assist with actual passenger screening operations.

By Monday morning, checkpoint A remained closed while all other checkpoints at BWI had reopened. The airport urged travelers to keep monitoring its official social media channels, noting that "conditions may change." Similar scenes played out at airports across the country Sunday, with videos on social media showing TSA lines spilling into parking garages at hubs in Houston, Atlanta, and Florida.