TSA lines are so out of control that travelers are hiring line-sitters

https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2026/03/28/tsa-line-sitters/

by bookofjoe • 4 months ago

115 105 4 months ago

washingtonpost.com

miyuru• 4 months ago

https://archive.ph/cwDaq (No account needed)

arcza• 4 months ago

Doesn't this guy's server just DDoS some dude's blog with your own browser? Didn't click.

javawizard• 4 months ago

Yes, and: If I recall correctly, cloudflare is sinking all the extra traffic for him, so it doesn't actually impact him.

Last I heard it's a morally objectionable thing at this point rather than something that's having any practical impact.

(Which of course doesn't make it ok... I'm just a little less inclined to judge people that still use archive links when needed.)

gradientsrneat• 4 months ago

Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46843805

The archive.today domains have also poisoned DNS lookups from some privacy-preserving DNS providers, and in rare cases have been caught tampering the archive data. Make of that what you will.

Imustaskforhelp• 4 months ago

I have been kind of experimenting with using single archive pages for archive.is /.ph/.today links and then experimenting with either putting these on my github pages (and then archiving) just for more preservation purposes.

Today I wanted to try something different so I used singlefile to make a html and then make pdf file from that html and uploaded it to archive.org

https://archive.org/details/tsa-lines-are-so-out-of-control-...

I don't wish to have news articles in my github as it clutters or I am not sure how these laws might follow (there is definitely a reason as to why archive.is creator is anonymous) and so I am looking for more anonymous ways to upload (my main intentions are that archive.ph can be nice but I feel like its not validated within wikipedia/all the controversies it has and I am just experimenting with things right now)

I have also uploaded this on catbox.moe (https://files.catbox.moe/mt9sus.html) but it has plain/text content-type, does anyone know a more anonymous content-type plain/text -> html where I can upload things perhaps, I have thoughts about creating something like this (where people can give links to text .html files and I can then display the html) but I am also a bit worried that it might be used for nefarious purposes.

I am not sure what I should do actually about it, I like thinking about archiving though, but anything other than archive.org like archive.is, can only function best if they are anonymous and I am not really anonymous/intend to be.

This makes me sympathetic of them against the journalist who tried to dox them but also I kind of understand that journalist tried approaching first from a more curiosity, maybe a threat-actor model, I had done something like this once to a service because I wanted to know if govt.'s would be able to catch them or not (they had a reddit proxy) and I found that they had their opsec secure and I was really impressed but I sometimes wonder, if the journalist also did something like this and the archive.is owner felt like it was a threat to archive and decided to ddos and all the things that followed, I sort of understand both the perspectives, so it just makes me sad as how this ended up folding up.

(This comment might've been more relevant within the archive.is drama hackernews thread but I think that its long gone and I was still forming my opinion on all of this which clearly has some nuance)

porridgeraisin2• 4 months ago

In Indian temples line-sitters are very common. Many queues are 5+ hours long.

hellojesus2• 4 months ago

Fascinating. Is there something specific about those temples that draws the crowds, like something akin to a famous cathedral? Must worship take place in a temple? I don't know how the religion works but did get to visit a local temple once with some coworkers and enjoyed the atmosphere.

functional_dev• 4 months ago

maybe they are considered direct link between heaven and earth :)

porridgeraisin2• 4 months ago

Yeah each temple has its speciality.

Every family has a "kuladeivam" which is basically a temple for that (patrilineal) lineage. Every family has one. Every temple has few families.

Then it's special for people in the same town as the temple. Modern migration makes this a different set from the one above.

Then each temple has special events on specific days/week/month/year.

And then on top of that some few hundred temples are special in general and are crowded 365 days of the year with people from all over.

Adds up.

Must worship take place in a temple?

Just my understanding. You can worship anywhere even in your head, but temples are one thing which improve "quality" of worship by a lot. The logic roughly goes - since most people aren't capable of high (enuf) quality worship in their head or at home, temples help them. More of a magnitude thing rather than a binary thing.

lotsofpulp• 4 months ago

Status symbols among certain tribes. I went to <x> place. Most (all?) religions don’t prevent the poor from salvation, but humans like to make up hurdles to see who can overcome them.

The status isn’t even necessarily money related, but can just be to see who is more “devoted”.

deadbabe• 4 months ago

I keep hearing about these long lines but I literally went to a major airport the other day for a flight and got through security in minutes.

fourside• 4 months ago

I’ve heard this is very airport dependent

dawnerd• 4 months ago

It’s really just a handful that have long lines part of the day. LAX for example hasn’t has a line at all really. Takes longer for my bag to be secondary checked every time than it does to wait in line.

amelius• 4 months ago

That's why anecdotal evidence doesn't mean much.

groundzeros2015• 4 months ago

They are both anecdotal

kotaKat• 4 months ago

Essential Air Service travelers aren't seeing any major pain either traveling outbound. Fortunately (though kind of sadly) the TSA folks only work a couple hours a day at the checkpoint for the single flight in and out so most of them are working side jobs anyways as their day job from what I hear. Our checkpoint doesn't even open until ~45 minutes before boarding starts in the middle of the day.

arjie• 4 months ago

It seems that SFO's policy of having an intermediate company that buffers salaries is working well because I flew through there to Taipei after this whole situation and there was no wait.

nubg• 4 months ago

buffers salaries?

Someone12342• 4 months ago

A strange way of saying, not TSA at all, and handled by a private for-profit company instead.

elromulous2• 4 months ago

I _just_ went though the line. It wasn't too bad (5-10min, despite having bio ID), but it was by far the worst I've encountered at SFO in the decade I've been flying out of there.

elromulous2• 4 months ago

P.s. And as usual, TSA doesn't understand anything about queueing theory and doesn't implement round robin / starvation prevention. Global services and clear get absolute priority over other queues.

NewJazz• 4 months ago

Probably because people are going via SFO when they might otherwise go via Oakland or elsewhere.

ozi• 4 months ago

yeah SFO seems to be completely uneffected

acdha• 4 months ago

It’s an odd list of airports which contract their own security screeners. I’d bet a lot of places are going to consider joining that program:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/21/us/airports-without-tsa

Ferret7446• 4 months ago

I thought all of the lines went away after ICE came in? That's what I heard, but you can't trust the news these days.

Either because ICE is more competent than TSA or their presence is scaring away a lot of people

oefrha• 4 months ago

From the last few paragraphs:

There is an official way for travelers to bypass long TSA waits if they’re willing to spend: hiring concierge services to escort them through security.
Perq Soleil is an airport arrival and departure assistance service that can help travelers through TSA in about a minute flat by accessing alternative lines usually reserved for airport staff and airline personnel. The company — which operates in more than 300 airports and 150 countries — charges a base rate that varies by location.

Talk about burying the lede. Apparently the airports “highly discourage” line-sitters, but if you use services that pre-bribed airports you can skip the lines entirely.

PearlRiver• 4 months ago

The people arriving on private jets have always bypassed these bureaucratic procedures. Brotherhood and equality.

hammock4• 4 months ago

Why should private plane passengers be subject to TSA? TSA (paid for by you and me by the way, not for free) exists to protect the public from harm, on public flights by common carriers. It used to be contracted by airlines themselves. Unless you are the most extreme of pro-seatbelt law people, it would make little sense for TSA to screen anyone on a private plane manifest unless the client asked them to.

miki123211• 4 months ago

As somebody who doesn't travel on private jets, I'm very, very happy that I'm not anywhere close to those people.

Imagine the pandemonium that would ensue if Taylor Swift were to enter an airport terminal through the normal entrance.

ryandrake• 4 months ago

It's true equality: The rich and poor alike are allowed to fly on private jets or hire a departure assistance service!

ReptileMan• 4 months ago

Capitalism works quite well at solving problems.

idiotsecant2• 4 months ago

Efficiency is when you make a problem and then make people pay you to solve it. Or maybe that was some other word, I forget.

otterley3• 4 months ago

I don’t even understand why this is an issue, because TSA screening is funded through user fees. There’s a line item of $5.60 per one-way ticket for exactly this that’s separate from airfare and other fees. (https://www.tsa.gov/for-industry/security-fees)

If this is so, why does Congress have to fund the program? Why not pass the funds through directly to the agency?

gruez• 4 months ago

The same article you linked has a chart that shows that actual expenses are around 4x the fees that are collected.

Someone12342• 4 months ago

The question itself feels like it calls for "Schoolhouse Rock" level basics about how the federal government works.

The federal government does not work like a private escrow account where a fee collected for X automatically goes to Y. Tax revenue comes in to the Treasury, and Congress decides what agencies are allowed to spend. So even if TSA screening is funded in part by a per-ticket user fee, TSA still does not get to just collect that money and use it directly. Congress has to authorize and appropriate it.

On a practical level, imagine the chaos if every federal department acted as its own tax collector and then set its own spending priorities. That is basically an argument for gutting Congress's oversight of TSA and treating it like an independent agency, just because Congress and the executive branch invented the modern shutdown in the 1980s.

Keep in mind shutdowns are a fairly new concept, that nearly no other country has. The US also didn't have it for most of its history. Congress could stop at any time it wanted.

otterley3• 4 months ago

You’re right that that’s the default state. However, Congress could have set things up such that the fees would pass through to TSA’s budget (i.e. earmarked) but chose not to.

ivewonyoung• 4 months ago

Many are run by user fees, such as USCIS that keeps operating during shutdowns.

seanmcdirmid2• 4 months ago

SFO doesn’t use TSA for security and works like this with whatever contractor it hire. I wish all airports would just use private security funded via usage fees, then we would never be held hostage because some whacko wanted to use masked thugs to beat up and shoot Americans.

advisedwang• 4 months ago

Many government services do directly use fees to pay for operating the service. Those services can operate with no government appropriation, and the funds never leave the specific agencies' own accounts.

Examples:

* USCIS (source: https://www.aila.org/library/practice-alert-what-happens-if-...)

* 1,823/7,001 Fish and Wildlife service staff (https://www.doi.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2025-09/do...)

* 38,252/74,210 of the FDA (https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy-2026-hhs-contingency-sta...)

* USPS (although as a government owned corporation the separation of funding is more obvious)

* Customs (the actual folks that process tariffs are paid for by the tariffs, unlike border patrol)

cheschire• 4 months ago

https://www.gao.gov/products/b-167710-o.m.

"Nonappropriated fund activities" are a thing though?

gos92• 4 months ago

Money is fungible.

mikkupikku• 4 months ago

AFAIC there's no good reason for airport security to be a federal jobs program in the first place. The airports and/or their contractors are perfectly capable of operating x-ray machines and metal detectors on their own, and from what I understand are even still permitted to but all choose to let the government do it and pay for it.

What the fuck is the TSA even supposed to be doing? The 9/11 guys supposedly used box cutters. Does anybody seriously think you can't get a little blade like that onto an airplane in your carry on luggage? I bring double sided razor blades with every time I fly and they have never flagged it. And more importantly, does anybody actually believe you could still hijack a plane with a pocket knife? All the other passengers now know the score, they all die unless they throw themselves on you which they will and have done many times since. What's more, you won't get into the locked cockpit anyway. Airport security is solved. Basic bitch scanning for guns is all you need and we had that solved in the 90s which is the reason the hijackers used pocket knives, which no longer works. Disband the TSA.

m348e9123• 4 months ago

I'm not the first to suggest this, but I think "fly at your own risk" airlines would be popular with some people. Keep the cockpit door reinforced, and maintain a gentleman's agreement among travellers on what to do if a passenger threatens a flight. Airport security is now reduced to 10 seconds.

icegreentea2• 4 months ago

If you scroll down on the page, it'll show that the user fees only offset ~20% of the overall security expenses.

In addition, most fees (including most of the TSA fee) collected by the US Federal government isn't earmarked - it just goes into the general fund.

More breakdown here: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/23/us/tsa-funding-security-fees-...

otterley3• 4 months ago

Thanks!

jermaustin1• 4 months ago

Because the fee revenue was created by congress, so the money goes 1/3 to Treasury to help pay national debt (doesn't really make a dent), about $1.6B goes to the government general fund. But FY24 collected $4.5B in fees, but the budget was almost $9.5B.

So even if all the money went to TSA, less than half their budget is covered. There is inherently bloat in that, but that is for a different discussion.

But bigger still, if Congress didn't reappropriate that money from TSA, they'd either have to spend less (less likely), raise taxes (not likely), or go deeper in debt (very likely) in order to cover whatever they are currently covering with their 70% share of the fee.

m348e9123• 4 months ago

I'm going to go out on a limb and say the 5.60 per person per flight doesn't cover the cost of TSA airport security operations leaving congress responsible for the gap.

If you are wondering how that could happen, it starts with no-bid contracts and ends with inefficiency and has been heavily influenced by a guy whose name sounds a lot like Schmical Schmertoff.

jt2190• 4 months ago

Only FOUR people actually used these services?

Edit: Newspapers have a long history of using headline editors who add “spin” otherwise reasonable stories handed in by journalists. This story was built by talking to a few entrepreneurs who offer line-sitting to see if they’d served any customers for airport security waits. Only one had.

mrtksn2• 4 months ago

I wonder why Trump just doesn't sell this himself, like golden tickets that you can buy from ICE where they just push back the free-tier line enjoyers to insert the patriotic gold level travelers.

In Turkey people with connections to the government get strobe lights permit to skip the traffic through the emergency line. There's so many opportunities both for monetization and loyalty rewarding.

Due to lapses like that sometimes I question my theory that all those people(Erdogan, Trump, Putin etc) are in the same group chat.

foolfoolz2• 4 months ago

we already have this with TSA Pre

mrtksn2• 4 months ago

Where does the money go? With ICE implementation they can split the proceeds and the customers can enjoy seeing people pushed around on prem.

squidsoup• 4 months ago

The TSA Pre lines are often as long as the standard lines.

tartoran• 4 months ago

If some of his minions gave him this idea he’d probably do it.

pjc50• 4 months ago

The reverse applies: if you protest against the regime, your TSA pre can be revoked. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

alfanick• 4 months ago

I know it's bad, but yeah, I just hate waiting, it's stupid. So whenever I can I just go through "first class" security and nothing bad happens, just skipping the queue. Look decent, look busy, keep on walking and bam you're past the security in a minute compared to tens of minutes or hours. And don't ever remove that "short connection" or "priority" tag from your luggage, it indeed goes out first. Airports are so freaking annoying way to commute, take a bus/train/tram/taxi/car to the airport, figure out the maze, wait in queue, get bored after security (because you arrived to early not knowing how much you're going to wait in security), go to a gate, then a different gate, queue again, get inside, and wait again. Why did we do this to ourselves!?

joquarky2• 4 months ago

Some people are challenged by the choice whether to go without medication or food this week.

api• 4 months ago

The basic competence of elected officials and they people they appoint matters.

GaProgMan• 4 months ago

I flew out of SeaTac yesterday (March 28th), and the TSA there were pretty well staffed. Took me around 6 minutes, and that was only because the person in front of me was talking to the agent about the tote bag they got from Trader Joe's.

natas• 4 months ago

those tote bags are the town's talk!!!

AVA_Travel• 4 months ago

The TSA experience is a big reason why some international travelers actively avoid US layovers. I've talked to people who book longer routes through Europe or Asia just to skip US airport security theater.

It's interesting that the market solution is hiring line-sitters rather than, say, pressure on TSA to improve throughput. Says a lot about how normalized the dysfunction has become.

TSA lines are so out of control that travelers are hiring line-sitters

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