Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport had a rough weekend.
Passengers saw long security lines Sunday and Monday morning, as Transportation Security Administration officers entered their fourth week of working without pay during a partial government shutdown and airlines continued to recover from bad weather in Atlanta on Friday.
The Department of Homeland Security’s budget has been held up since Feb. 14 because of a congressional dispute over the department’s immigration enforcement operations. Funding for other DHS agencies — including TSA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard — is caught in the crossfire.
Although Monday morning is usually a busy time for the Atlanta airport, lines remained worse than normal because of “ongoing staffing constraints” and residual impact from weekend weather, airport officials said.
This came after hail and a thunderstorm Friday caused days of cascading delays and operational disruption.
For Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, which represents roughly 80% of the airport’s traffic with its partners, the hail left more than 50 aircraft in need of inspections and rippled out into days of delays.
Lightning left ground crews unable to work safely at times, which meant aircraft were unable to pull in or out of gates, leaving some passengers stranded on the tarmac for hours.
A Delta spokesperson in a statement apologized to customers, “as we know that a delay on the tarmac waiting for an arrival gate is frustrating. Delta people worked through severe weather challenges in ATL that drove gating constraints Friday evening. The safety of our customers and crew is our highest priority.”
Federal Aviation Administration-mandated ground stops and ground delays also reduced the availability of flight crews Saturday given rest requirements, the airline added.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
Ryan Willis, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Peachtree City, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday the airport saw about an hour of thunderstorm activity around 6:30 p.m. Friday evening, including pea-sized hail and quite a bit of lightning.
“Unfortunately, that is a very busy time of day for aircraft operations. That thunderstorm was not conveniently placed and timed that day,” he said.
On Friday, about 42% of Delta’s Atlanta flights were delayed and 7% canceled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.com.
On Saturday, nearly half of Delta’s local schedule was delayed and 20% canceled; on Sunday, about 30% of Delta’s schedule was delayed.
By Monday morning, flight operations appeared to have recovered. Just a small percentage of Delta’s flights were delayed, per FlightAware.
But security wait times remained longer than normal.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
Kent Hornsby of Montgomery, Alabama, told the AJC it took him 45 minutes to get through the Atlanta PreCheck line around 7 a.m. Monday morning en route to El Salvador.
But he was also in the Atlanta airport Saturday morning trying to return to Montgomery, when it took him nearly three hours just to check a bag because of passenger volumes after the storm. “That was the worst. That was the longest line I’ve ever been in,” he said.
According to an AJC review of airport wait time data, domestic main checkpoint lines have hardly surpassed 45 minutes this year. But this weekend, waits extended past 45 minutes for more than 17% of the total time the checkpoint was open.
TSA employees received their first partial paycheck late last week.
On Sunday, the agency reported security lines up to three hours long across many major airports, according to Lauren Bis, deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the department.
“These front-line heroes received only partial paychecks earlier this month and now face their first full missed paycheck, leading to financial hardship, absences and crippling staffing shortages,” she said.
The agency said Atlanta saw an average of 60-minute wait times Sunday afternoon, which is well above normal.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
Chris Sununu, president and CEO of industry association Airlines for Americas, said in a written statement the industry was seeing “firsthand the significant strains that the current DHS shutdown is causing across the aviation system.”
“The shutdown is having very real consequences, and hardworking federal aviation workers, the airline industry and our passengers are being used as a political football once again.”
On Friday night, a Southwest Airlines flight was also diverted to Atlanta because of a reported security issue, but that “did not create an additional systemwide operational impact,” an airport spokesperson said.
The FBI told WSB-TV “no credible threat” was found and no charges will be filed.
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