After a frustrating spring filled with long, slow-moving security lines at airports, Congress, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), airlines, and airports banded together to take action in June—and it looks like it paid off, at least in the short term.
While getting through security regularly took an hour or more in May, the TSA says that by the end of July the average wait time nationwide had fallen to under 10 minutes.
Among the measures taken that led to this heartwarming miracle: Congress gave the TSA permission to shift around $62 million in funds in order to hire more full-time agents, airports hired contractors to take on nonsecurity duties around checkpoints so that agents could focus on screenings exclusively, and a renewed emphasis was placed on enrolling more passengers in PreCheck, which lets those who have paid a fee and passed a screening to speed through security lines without removing their shoes or taking their laptops out of carrying cases.
And thus the summer travel season was snatched from the jaws of defeat.
