Wait times of four, even five, hours have become the norm at many U.S. airport security checkpoints as the partial government shutdown drags on with no end in sight.
Not so at San Francisco International Airport, or Kansas City International Airport, or Sarasota Bradenton International Airport in Florida. Travelers there are still breezing through security.
Those airports, along with 17 smaller ones from Montana to Mississippi, are part of the Screening Partnership Program, a federal initiative that lets airports operate security checkpoints using private contractors rather than Transportation Security Administration employees.
That distinction would normally matter little, if at all, to most travelers. But as unpaid T.S.A. agents call out by the thousands during this shutdown, causing security lines to wrap around and extend outside terminals, the program has become an unexpected boon at the handful U.S. airports where it’s in place.
At San Francisco International, contracted security officers have screened more than two million fliers in the last 30 days while keeping average peak wait times under 10 minutes, said Doug Yakel, an airport spokesman.
Kansas City International has also generally kept wait times below 10 minutes, with peaks of no more than 30 minutes, said Jackson Overstreet, a spokesman for the city’s aviation department.
Sarasota International screened nearly 300,000 passengers in the last 30 days, and the average wait time in its standard security lane was just over three minutes. In its T.S.A. PreCheck lane, the wait averaged less than two minutes.
“It’s a huge difference right now,” said Paul Hoback, Sarasota International’s chief executive. “We are fully staffed, all of our checkpoints are fully operational, and we’re seeing no impact from this government shutdown.”
The airports using contracted security are not the nation’s busiest. San Francisco International, the largest U.S. airport with private screening, has about 3,600 scheduled departures over the next week, according to the tracking site Flightradar24, compared with 4,200 at Kennedy Airport in New York and nearly 7,800 at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Private security contractors receive the same training as T.S.A. agents, and a handful of on-site T.S.A. managers oversee operations. But the contractors, because they’re employed by private companies paid up front by the T.S.A., have continued to receive their salaries during the shutdown even as nearly 50,000 T.S.A. agents have worked for more than 40 days without a paycheck. Many agents have taken on second jobs to pay their bills, and nearly 500 have quit since the shutdown began, according to the agency.
The T.S.A.’s acting administrator, Ha Nguyen McNeill, said at a congressional hearing on Wednesday that the nation’s airports were experiencing “the highest wait times in history.” The absence rates of T.S.A. agents have soared to more than 40 percent at some airports from pre-shutdown rates of 4 percent, she said.
The Trump administration this week sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to staff security checkpoints at some airports with particularly long lines. An arrest made by ICE officers at San Francisco International on Sunday night was not related to that deployment.
At San Francisco International, passengers were grateful for the shorter lines. But not everyone knew to expect them. Jordan Stubbs, 36, arrived more than three hours ahead of her flight home to San Antonio last weekend after hearing about the long wait times at airports across the country. She quickly found herself with hours to kill before takeoff.
“I’m surprised at how it’s not busy,” she said. “I expected it to be super crowded.”
Stefan Luedtke, a 20-year-old Tulane University student visiting family for spring break, applauded the airport for being part of the program, which was created in 2004 when many aviation officials thought airport security would eventually return to the private sector after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. San Francisco joined in 2005.
“It makes me proud of the city,” Mr. Luedtke said.
It’s not yet clear whether the partial shutdown will drive more airports to join the private-security program.
In the meantime, passengers moved smoothly from curb to gate, a striking contrast to the recent images from many T.S.A.-staffed airports.
“It’s very efficient,” said Elaine Clark, 75, on a recent day at Sarasota International. The private contractors, she added, “might be a little more accommodating than T.S.A.”
Coral Murphy Marcos contributed reporting from San Francisco; Curt Anderson from Sarasota, Fla.; and Christine Chung from New York.
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Gabe Castro-Root is a travel reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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