U.S. Airports Warn About Hours-Long Wait Times, Chicago O’Hare May Be Next

If you get to the airport way early, this is your time.

Flying within the next few weeks could get interesting. Over the weekend, the Houston Airport and the New Orleans Airport issued warnings about possible hours-long waits at the bag check-in counter and in the security line.

Here's a video out of the Houston Airport that gained traction this weekend:

And Why?

There are 2 reasons given by the airports for the issue:

1. DHS Shutdown, that results in a staffing shortage of TSA agents.
2. Spring Break travel season

Will this be over soon? Nope. There's no deal in sight to end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown. TSA agents are expected to remain on the job without pay during a shutdown.

As for Spring Break travel surge, stats from United Airlines forecast that over 27 million people will travel during Spring Break. But the good news is that stats show international airfare is down a bit from last year during Feb. 21-Apr. 13th.

So this likely means that a lot of security lines at both O'Hare and Midway will be closed. As of this morning, the wait time in the TSA lines at O'Hare was 40 minutes, pretty high for a Monday morning.

You can keep track of the wait times on O'Hare's website, Midway's website, or iFly.