Air travel system at 'breaking point' as BWI lines surge

BALTIMORE — BWI Marshall Airport continued advising travelers to arrive hours early Saturday as long security lines persisted, driven in part by staffing shortages among Transportation Security Administration officers during the prolonged federal shutdown.

The guidance came a day after President Donald Trump signed an executive action aimed at addressing disruptions at airports nationwide. In a memo authorizing pay for TSA workers, Trump said “America’s air travel system has reached its breaking point,” according to the Associated Press. TSA officers have been working without pay for more than 40 days amid the partial government shutdown.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said TSA workers could begin receiving paychecks as early as Monday.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson thanked Mullin and Trump for their efforts to get TSA employees paid amid the shutdown in a Saturday email to The Baltimore Sun.

“During this time, over 500 officers have quit, and thousands more have been forced to call out because they can’t afford basic necessities like gas, childcare, food, or rent,” the spokesperson said. “We are grateful to President Trump for taking action to help fund and pay TSA employees after more than 40 days without a paycheck.”

At the airport, security checkpoints A and B were closed, and officials warned of “significant delays” at Checkpoint C, which are expected to continue throughout Saturday. As of 9 a.m., BWI advised travelers to arrive four hours before their scheduled departures — far earlier than the typical recommendation of between two and three hours for domestic or international flights.

“We have not previously experienced checkpoint wait times similar to what we are seeing this morning,” the airport wrote in a post to X. The most impacted travelers are those departing from A, B, C concourses. Security Checkpoint D/E was less impacted this morning, though BWI advised in the post that that might change as the day progresses.

The delays followed a ground stop issued Friday evening by the Federal Aviation Administration. BWI was one of five airports affected, along with Washington Dulles International, Ronald Reagan Washington National, Charlottesville-Albemarle and Richmond airports.

The FAA said the ground stop was tied to an Operational Contingency Level, a reduced level of air traffic control services used during emergencies or equipment outages. The disruption was linked to reports of a strong odor at the Potomac Terminal Radar Approach Control facility, which handles air traffic control for the region.

The ground stop was lifted shortly after 8 p.m., but delays continued into Saturday morning.

BWI Customer Ambassador Martin Louamou said he had never seen lines like the ones wrapping around the outside of the airport’s terminal entrances ever before in over two decades of working at airports, including at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport.

The 62-year-old was posted at the ever-changing end of the line with a sign saying as much to help incoming passengers find where to begin their long wait to get inside the airport, a job that began Friday. Louamou said he’d seen “many people missing flights” this week, while “before, everything was correct.”

In the line outside, Progress Maduka was not optimistic she would make her Southwest flight to Charlotte with a scheduled takeoff of 1:30 p.m. Saturday. She hoped the order signed by President Trump would kick in pay for TSA “right away.”

“I understand what … Congress is fighting for,” Maduka said. “But right now it’s affecting a lot of people,” including passengers and workers alike.

Adrien Malick accompanied his daughter, wife and 2-year-old granddaughter in the line outside as they waited, beginning at 10 a.m., to enter the terminal in hopes of making a flight to Sarasota on Saturday afternoon.

“I’ve never seen so many people in one place at one time,” Malick said. “It’s absurd… It all appears to be politics. Nobody wants the other person to look good.”

Leslie Pahl, Malick’s daughter, blamed “ineffectual leadership” for the delays at BWI.

U.S. Rep Sarah Elfreth voted against House Republicans’ resolution to fund the Department of Homeland Security, the federal department that runs several national agencies like TSA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol. Though the U.S. Senate passed a bill to fund DHS, including TSA, without funding ICE and Border Patrol, the House passed a bill to fund the entire department through May 22, according to the Associated Press.

“Representing the Baltimore/Washington International (BWI) Thurgood Marshall Airport and over 45,000 federal employees, nothing is more important than paying our civil servants and ensuring the American people can travel safely,” Elfreth said in a statement after the vote Friday night.

“I have always been clear that we cannot fund President Trump’s weaponization of ICE and the brutality they have unleashed on communities around our country,” she said.

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(Sun reporter Mathew Schumer contributed to this article.)

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