Passengers expecting a repeat of last week’s airport misery generally found far shorter security lines on Monday after President Trump signed an executive order on Friday to pay Transportation Security Administration employees.
Security waits were 15 minutes and under at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, and about 30 minutes at Kennedy Airport in New York as of midday Monday.
Just days ago at these hubs, nightmarish lines zigzagged across the terminal and even stretched outside it, causing major anxiety for travelers on spring break and leading Atlanta and all three major New York airports to pause their real-time wait trackers. All of those trackers were operating on Monday.
T.S.A. officers had been working without pay since Feb. 14, when the Department of Homeland Security’s funding lapsed, setting off a partial government shutdown as Congress failed to resolve a standoff over immigration enforcement. On Friday, more than 3,500 T.S.A. officers called out sick, a 12 percent absence rate that was the highest of the shutdown so far.
The officer absence rate, and the lines at airports, have begun to ease in the days since the president’s executive order. Some 3,000 T.S.A. officers were absent on Sunday, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which noted that more than 500 officers have quit during the shutdown.
At Hartsfield-Jackson International around 10:30 a.m., the average passenger took about three to five minutes to snake through the lines, show identification and head to luggage screening. Most of the people checking passenger IDs were Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, rather than T.S.A. agents. ICE officers, deployed to airports a week ago, have also been involved in patrolling and directing traffic.
Ron Woods, of Atlanta, said he was planning to fly to Houston on Wednesday. He went to the Atlanta airport on Monday to check out the lines and decide how early he should arrive for his upcoming flight.
“What happened to the lines? They disappeared,” Mr. Woods remarked to an airport passerby.
The lines haven’t shrunk everywhere, though. In New York, at LaGuardia Airport’s Terminal B, they continued to stretch the length of the main departures terminal on Monday morning, wrapping around the cavernous hall. Airport personnel guiding the lines told passengers the current wait was at least two hours. Earlier that morning, it was as long as four hours.
T.S.A. employees said they had begun to receive paychecks that covered the last several weeks of work.
Michelle Baruchman contributed reporting from Atlanta, and Wesley Parnell from New York.
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Christine Chung is a Times reporter covering airlines and consumer travel.
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