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.
At Hartsfield-Jackson, the nation’s busiest airport, wait times at the main security checkpoint exceeded an hour Monday morning after the TSA closed “a few security lanes because of the shutdown,” said Elise Durham, a spokeswoman for the airport. At the airport’s other checkpoints for domestic travelers, wait times were between 30 and 45 minutes, she said.
In Houston, Trahan said, the diversion of passengers to other terminals for screening began at 3:30 p.m. Sunday and continued Monday. 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.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.