U.S. airport operations began stabilizing after Transportation Security Administration officers finally received retroactive pay following six weeks without a paycheck during the partial Department of Homeland Security shutdown. The national TSA absence rate fell to 8.6% on Monday from a peak of 12.4% on Friday, a sharp improvement that helped ease some of the worst checkpoint disruptions seen at major hubs. Airports that had recently endured multi-hour security lines started reporting much shorter waits, showing how quickly staffing relief translated into operational recovery.
The story mattered because the shutdown had pushed airport security operations close to a breaking point during spring-break demand, with some lines stretching beyond four hours and emergency staffing measures deployed to keep screening lanes open. More than 500 TSA officers had already quit since mid-February, and federal authorities had sent other Homeland Security personnel to assist at 14 large airports, underlining how serious the staffing strain had become. Even after pay resumed, the system was not fully back to normal, with Atlanta and Houston still showing elevated absences and the broader DHS funding fight unresolved.
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