Hobby Airport in Houston might have been the worst. Folks showed up on Saturday, March 14, planning to jet off for spring break, only to find a security line so long it went downstairs to the baggage claim area.
If you didn’t get there four hours before boarding, you missed your flight. Hobby was so dysfunctional that the Federal Aviation Administration stopped all incoming flights.
Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport was also a madhouse over the weekend. On Sunday, March 15, wait times exceeded two-and-a-half hours.
JFK, O’Hare, New Orleans, and other airports had similar disasters, thanks to the partial government shutdown, which left the Transportation Security Administration without funding.
So why did most airports not have these issues? It turns out that the shutdown alone didn’t grind TSA screening to a halt.
Yes, the Democrats have filibustered all funding for the Department of Homeland Security, and thus, the TSA is currently unfunded. But the TSA can still legally perform all of its functions.
In fact, as essential government workers, TSA airport workers are required to show up. Yet they’re not showing up, and that’s why the lines are so long. They’re calling out sick, in massive numbers.
On March 14 at Hobby, 55% of TSA workers called out sick. More than one-third of workers at New Orleans and Atlanta did the same on March 15.
The problem: Just because the luggage voyeurs, crotch-patters, and metal-detector-manners have to work, it doesn’t mean they get paid.
Friday, March 13, was a scheduled payday. Yes, the workers will get back pay when Congress approves the funding, but when the direct deposit didn’t hit, many workers called it quits.
Many resigned from their jobs altogether. About 10% nationwide called in sick over the weekend. It seemed to be locally contagious — in some cities, obviously, absenteeism was much worse, while in most it was near normal.
The first question is whether this will spread to other cities, especially if there’s no March 27 paycheck.
The second question is whether we should consider these folks, whose job it is to make our lives difficult, spoiled government workers or innocent victims of bad politics?
But finally, we should ask whether these pat-downs, belt removals, and body-scanning X-ray machines are necessary at all.
The government erects fences and locks the gate. Then, when the gate is left unmanned, some dweeb always says, “See, you need the government, because how else would you get through the gate?”
THE YOUTH CRIME WAVE IN A WEALTHY DC SUBURB
Does the TSA make us safer, or does it just make our lives harder?
So how should the traveler handle this mess? Show up at the airport early, and to make the time pass while you wait in line, be sure to bring a good magazine.
