3-Hour Airport Lines and a System Under Pressure

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In this episode of the Skift Travel Podcast, we unpack what may be the clearest signal yet that the U.S. travel system is under real strain.

Sarah Kopit and guest host Lex Haris break down how a partial government shutdown is impacting TSA staffing, why some airports are seeing massive wait times while others are operating normally, and how unpredictable the experience has become for travelers.

The conversation goes beyond the headlines to explore what happens when multiple pressures hit the system at once — record spring break demand, staffing shortages, operational incidents, and ongoing political uncertainty. They also examine the business side: why some airlines like United say they’re well positioned to weather the chaos, while others may struggle if conditions worsen. And with global events and international travel sentiment in the mix, the ripple effects could extend far beyond U.S. airports.

At its core, this episode asks a simple question: Is this just a rough week for travel — or a sign of something bigger?

Presented by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Viasat Ads⁠⁠⁠⁠. Click ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more!

Watch This Episode

The number of the week is three. That is three hours. Three hours is the amount of time that many travelers are now having to wait at their local airports because of the partial government shutdown that continues to royal the US travel ecosystem.

And frankly, not just the US., anywhere that is related or connected to the United States of America. So today, my partner in crime, Seth, is across the pond eating fish and chips in England. We’ll find out all about that when he gets back next week.

But we have a special guest host today, Lex Harris, Skiff’s managing editor. Hey, Lex, have you ever seen anything like Monday was for in in air traffic, in airlines, in the aviation industry?

No, Monday was insane.

And, you know, and because we woke up and we’ve worked together now almost three years, Sarah, and we’ve seen like near misses, we’ve seen like, we’ve seen stuff in the Middle East, we’ve seen partial shut downs, but it was like that was the moment

it felt like things were starting to break. Because it, you know, it was a tragedy and it felt preventable, right? And it was, it felt like, okay, this it’s it felt like a human that was just like a system that was overworked.

And that was why and then it hit home was a strain in the system and stress. And then you sent the note right away about Newark being shut down briefly. And so things started to like pick up at that point.

Yeah.

So like, if like we’re setting the stage, like what is actually going on right now at US airports and why, why this is just so kind of cataclysmic for those of us that follow it. So it is spring break right now. I am upstate with my family.

Everybody is kind of in transit moving around. And not only is it spring break, but it is the highest demand spring break that, you know, the travel industry has ever seen. That’s not new.

Every single time we kind of do these things, I do a lot of TV hits for it. It’s always like record breaking, record breaking, record breaking. So that’s fine.

But, you know, we are in the high season. So we’ve got that. So then we’ve got the partial government shutdown, which we’re going to talk about quite a bit here.

But the thing that’s really interesting about this government shutdown, to me anyway, is that its partialness is, I think, one of the only reasons why it’s not over yet.

Meaning, like when we’ve seen shutdowns in the past, they’ve been full government shutdowns. And so there’s a lot of pain out there. There’s a lot of things that are closed and not being reported.

People are not getting paid. But this time, because of the confluence of events that went on before the shutdown, the people who are not getting paid this time are TSA agents.

Other members of the Department of Homeland Security are, and to be fair, the TSA agents will get paid back pay when this is over, but they’re not getting paid now. And so fair enough, they quit or call in sick.

Most likely not to sit on their couch, but to get paid work somewhere else. So we got that too. So we got spring break, so high travel anyway.

We’ve got a partial government shutdown. We’ve got TSA agents not coming in. Then on Monday, we had the ground stop at both LaGuardia and Newark because of a plane collision at LaGuardia, because of the smell of smoke, I should say.

I don’t think there actually was a fire. An air traffic control tower at Newark. And then just throw all of this into the mix.

The reason the government shutdown is still going on is because of ICE. It’s because the Republicans and Democrats cannot decide how or if to fund putting all of that aside for a moment.

But ICE are the people that the president is going to send or did send to the airports to fix this whole catastrophe. And that’s where we are.

That’s right. And what’s so funny is because we began with Monday and then it was like, oh yeah, over the weekend was when we were having our big virtual newsroom debate about ICE and what the implications of that would be.

And we thought that was going to be the big story on Monday. And it still is absolutely a big story. But it’s just one more thing.

And if I may, we should mention, this has been a rolling crisis for about a month now in aviation.

Like we, that begins four weeks before on February 28th, when we were all talking about the basic shutdown of a huge chunk of the global aviation space. And we in the US, we’re like, okay, we’re watching it. We put the whole newsroom on it.

And we’re like, and I remember the moment, we’re like, oh wait, but there is that shutdown still happening. And so one crisis just rolled into the other. And that’s where we are today.

So like, I don’t know, the question has come up.

I’ve seen a lot of stories about this. I’m now in like aviation, like it’s always really interesting, depending upon what story I’m working on. I’m one of those people that is like very online.

I’m a very online person. And so depending upon what I’m working on at any given moment, like I am down that rabbit hole. Like that is what my feeds are showing me.

And I’ve seen a lot of things about, you know, whether US aviation is broken. Like if this just, if this has broken it, like if we can’t ever go back, I don’t know.

I don’t really feel, I feel like this is, I mean, the word that I was going to say, I probably shouldn’t say on this podcast, it’s a cluster. But, I don’t think it’s broken. It will return.

I agree with that because of the, first of all, we’re getting, and you talked about being very online.

I’m like getting live reports right now from different skifters at airports as we speak. Just kind of fun.

Yes, that’s the thing. Everyone on our team was flying around this weekend.

Exactly.

And so like, because that was the other thing that was happening over the weekend was our airlines reporter Meghna, who was flying from New York to LAX for an event with United Airlines and to meet executives there, was giving us live updates.

All of us. Like, I’m still online.

Yeah, hour three. Hour three. And I don’t know if I’m going to make my flight.

That’s right.

And I’ve sent reporters into dangerous situations before where I just get anxiety and like I was getting it there. Like, is our reporter going to get to get to the event? And but just so even today.

So just so everyone knows, Magna is now returning from LA and at LAX. And there was no line at all. She’s just everything was normal at LAX.

And then another skifter just reported to me, not on editorial. They’re in San Juan and they’re there for four and a half hours trying to get back from a trip there. Oh, goodness.

They’ve set up tents outside to protect people who are waiting outside. So this gets you sad. It’s like, so everything’s all over the place, but is it broken?

Some parts are definitely. Oh, one other live update I just got. So JFK, LaGuardia, Newark have all, because we talked about this earlier, have all shut down their wait time.

So they turned them off again. So don’t tell you.

Okay. So you hate to find glee in all of this, but I don’t know. You take it where you can get it in this business, I kind of feel.

But the fact that you have turned off. So it’s almost like, see, this is how I kind of thought about it. It was almost like once that wait time number got to like three hours, somebody was like, yeah, we’re just not putting those times up anymore.

Like it’s too much. It’s too scary. And so now all three New York City airports are in that boat.

It seems like it’s completely dependent upon where the TSA is, where people are calling out. That really seems to be what the issue is. And I suppose it’s going to fluctuate depending upon…

Well, this gets to your…

The call out gets to your broken question. So we’re at 10% call out. So that’s TSA workers who are just like, 10% of them are just like, we’re not coming in.

We’re either going to another job that’s actually going to pay us.

Exactly.

But some airports we’ve reported were 30% call out. Just like that’s getting, when you lose 30% of your staff, though that’s very meaningful obviously. And 400 fit and they’ve now, I think they updated the number yesterday, 450 TSA workers.

So these aren’t call outs, just quit. So that’s out of workforce of 10,000. So this gets to the broken question of, if they did a deal today, it’s said, okay, we’ll pay you, just kidding.

You can get your paycheck next week. Those 450 aren’t coming back. And who’s going to work for them in the future?

Are we going to be able to refill those ranks and do others quit down the road?

Well, I mean, it’s so interesting. Seth and I have talked about this before, because we’ve had several members of the TSA from both administrations, both the Biden administration and the Trump administration on the pod.

They’re always so lovely, truly. And also just like funny human beings. They’re fun people to talk to.

But when you’re at the airport, the TSA members don’t seem to, I don’t know, be the people with like the happiest like job satisfaction in the world.

So it doesn’t surprise me that folks that are not getting paid a whole ton of money in the first place are just like, you know what, I’m out. Like let’s, like, I shall go work at Target. I don’t know, like pick your-

I did see a report today.

I did see a report today of TSA, like in one of the airports where things were going okay. Of like, and TSA was like joking about it. That made me, there weren’t many more details, but it did make me happy.

Like that, of like that not everyone, you know, we paint a picture sometimes of this whole world on fire.

And a lot of people are just going about their business, and they’re going to the airport and TSA is like joking around, and they’re like, isn’t this ridiculous? And people are going about their business.

And I don’t know, the brief moment have made me happy today.

And then there is, I shouldn’t even bring them up. But then there’s always the Elon Musk question about him just like deciding he was going to weigh in, which of course he can’t pay them. He said he wanted to, he can’t.

But just to add like yet another level of…

I wish they had said, okay, go ahead. And he wouldn’t have. But I…

So like that would have just… Anyway.

Yeah. So to your point, so like, is this kind of systemic answers? Yeah, I think kind of.

I think kind of. Especially if the political system continues to be so divisive.

Look, I think it’s not broken in the sense that will we fly next… I’m flying next week. Yes, I’ll probably get to fly.

And six months from now, people will be flying. So it’s not broken in that sense. But will it be a thing where we’re just like, I’m gonna go fly.

Yes, it sucks. And it’s not fun. And everybody knows it.

And it just becomes one of those running things that we know sucks. So not broken, but kind of sucks. And maybe that’s the range we’re thinking of here.

See, I really like flying.

Like I’m one of those people. Like I really like it. Like I like going to the airport.

I like seeing which plane I’m gonna be flying on and then like investigating my seat. I’m like one of those. So it’s just a shame.

It’s a shame to me that it might not be so great sometimes.

But anyway, yeah, I mean, this situation, this too shall pass, as they always say, but I mean, we’ve been covering government shutdowns the entire time we’ve worked together at Skift, it seems like, or at least since the, no, probably the entire

A lot of them.

Yeah, a lot, yeah.

Like real shutdowns, either those that ended quickly, a million threats of shutdowns that just got resolved.

Yes, it’s like every 90 days.

Yeah. It’s like, let’s brush off the template. Let’s get it ready.

Exactly.

Let’s get it ready.

So we’ve just kind of talked about the personal pain, the government pain, the TSA worker pain, all of that. But when do you think that this really starts to impact the companies, the businesses?

Either the airlines themselves or all the ancillary businesses that rely on the aviation infrastructure to make money and do their business.

Yeah. I mean, it depends who you talk to. So first, like I would say, it’s really good to be Scott Kirby right now.

So he’s the one, and I bring him up because he’s the one who’s been speaking the most in recent days. That’s the United Airlines CEO. They had a big rollout, so their rollout was a huge plane order, new seats, new investment.

When he talks about the current situation, he’s saying it like, hey, I’ve got a ton of cash. I think he preferred to be in triple the cash that they had in the past, the highest profit margins in the industry. So we’re going to be fine.

And if others aren’t fine, we’re going to benefit. So like, he wasn’t shy, right? We’re going to eat their lunch.

I think he, I have to check the quote now. I think he said like, we’d be willing to buy assets. So does that mean like, who’s he going to buy?

There’s plenty of rumors out there about what the United might want to buy right now.

Yeah, yeah.

So that’s them. You’ve got Delta saying the same thing. We’re the top end of the K in a K-shape economy.

So they’re not even pretending anymore. Like, well, we’re an airline for everybody. They’re just like, yes, we are very wealthy.

People are flying with us. We’re fine. But then there’s a whole lot of other airlines that will be struggling through this, I think.

I’m super excited about the United Airlines new, I forget the name of it right at this exact moment, but the three seat thing.

The, yes.

I don’t get how that works, but I’m eager to learn more about it.

Well, I’m a short person in real life. I, even though my head may be at the same level as all the people in the tiny boxes I talk in front of, I’m a short person. And so I think, I saw the video.

So when I fly, on the rare occasion I get to fly business class, I don’t really care about the lounges, I don’t really care about the food. The only thing I care about is that live flat seat on a long call flight.

I mean, I’m very happy to sit in coach if it’s at a two or three hour flight. But if I’m going over an ocean, I want to lay down. And I could do that.

Like I could do that with those, with that United’s, you know, because they put the, like they have a whole thing. There’s a little bed and-

Right. But do you buy three seats? Yes.

Well, so, so I talked to Meghna about this.

She said they haven’t decided on their pricing yet. But if you just do a little back of the napkin math, I mean, business class seats are so expensive. So she said that they had hinted or indicated to her that it’ll probably be cheaper.

Like you’ll buy the whole row. So let’s just say hypothetically, and I didn’t look this up. So I’m just like, let’s say going to London, you have, I mean, let’s say it’s a good deal to go to London.

It’s 500 bucks a seat, right? So that’s $1,500 for three seats if they charge full price. But that business class seat is conservatively double that, $3,000, $4,000.

In a weird way, it’s like an even like, it’s more of a flex than business class.

And it’s just like, yeah, I bought the whole row. It’s like, even though it’s cheaper. I don’t know.

I would feel really awkward about it. Just like, oh, you go to your seat. I’m just going to take all of these.

Yeah.

They got bedding for you. Yeah. Pillows, at least in the video.

So I’m like, I’ll be like Scott Kirby. I will be customer number one for your buy the whole row. I will try that.

I will try that out as soon as it is available to me. But I think Air New Zealand has been doing this for a while.

I’ve seen their ads because, like I said, I am in a certain rabbit hole of content, and they’ve been doing this, I think, for over a decade. So, and you can see why. If you’re leaving New Zealand, you’re going a long way, all the time, so.

But what I would say back to the question about the business impacts, so Scott Kirby aside, there will be issues.

And what you’re hearing most CEOs, whether it’s airlines and also hotels, because there’s a ripple effect on to it. People aren’t flying, they’re not staying in hotels. They’re all being very bold about it and just saying, well, this is uncertainty.

We’re used to uncertainty and we know how to manage uncertainty. Luke Martin, who’s at the investment conference in Berlin right now for hotels, is saying everyone is very much sticking to their investment plan.

They’re saying no change to the pipeline. But I don’t know how long that can last. I mean, that’s all well and good.

Of course, they’re going to say that today unless they’ve made a change.

It’s like, yeah, no change until there’s a change, because they’re all reporting, they’re all acknowledging a slowdown right now, from just a mild slowdown to, for some, depending what markets you’re in, if you’re in Dubai, a massive, you know, a

Yeah.

I mean, we’ve been just for this first part of this conversation, we’re just talking about like, it’s basically US government shenanigans.

Yeah.

We’re talking about the US government playing chicken with itself, hurting everybody else in the process. This is nothing new.

But we haven’t even talked about the war that’s going on, and oil, and jet fuel prices, and all of that, which probably has a lot more to do with consumer uncertainty, especially outside the United States. Right.

I mean, so growth wasn’t going gangbusters for hotels like anyway. So like last year was pretty mild, and this was the year they’re hoping for a rebound, again, World Cup. Everyone keeps talking about the World Cup.

But, I mean, so Sean, our senior hospitality editor, was talking with the hotel lobby group yesterday. And they were very clear that from their members, they’re hearing a lot of concern about just forward bookings for the World Cup, number one.

And I know you’ve said this like, yes, people are going to come to the World Cup, but will it hit? But then also, yeah, if there’s chaos at the airports, anything that makes it hard to get here is going to be a problem.

And they’re definitely hearing it from their members. And that’s one of their biggest concerns right now.

So speaking of the World Cup, the thing that we always talk about there, or one of the big things we talk about there, is that a lot of the people, I mean, the World Cup is going to be a big domestic event, sure.

But the United States of America is not the nation that is known to be like the rabid soccer fans. That’s the rest of the world, right?

So they have to fly into the United States of America, which has not been the most welcoming place for people that are not American lately.

So we do have, though, a new boss, a new person in charge in Mark Wayne Mullins, former MMA fighter, which I have to say every single time, because I just find it so interesting, much like I find that Sean Duffy was an OG member of the real world.

It’s apropos of nothing, really. I just find, I just would like to be seated next to, like in between both of them at a dinner party or something. It’s just, I find it-

And watch them do pushups and pushup contests and stuff.

I find it just eternally fascinating.

So we’ve got like a new guy on the hook here for this. Like really truly, like this is all his problem now. On multiple levels.

I wonder how he’s feeling today.

Right. I mean, he’s got to be stressed. I haven’t heard him comment too much.

He’s been in the past, very strong on immigration and not afraid of being brash in his language. I got the sense at his confirmation hearings anyway, that he was a little more reserved and taking the job seriously. But we’ll see.

I just don’t know him well enough or know his public comments well enough at this point since he got the job.

Yeah. At least we really knew Kristi Noem. We really knew where she was going with all of it.

It was no big surprise.

Yeah. I mean, I definitely heard her speak a lot. I am more intrigued by how rich Mark Wayne Mullen is, but that’s another matter.

I was trying to find his financial disclosures.

I was going to say, do we know how he made all his money?

Well, it was a family business, but it was like…

Was it?

He does. There was a story. I have not verified it myself, but there was a story about a lot of stock trading.

But my understanding was it was a family business. It was like a plumbing HVAC business, but I don’t know how much they sold it for.

Huh.

Okay. So what do you think? Do you have any predictions?

I know you’re not really in the predictions game, but like Seth and I often do this. We’re usually wildly wrong, so nobody’s held to any of these things. All right.

Let’s go first. Let’s take these one by one. What do you think comes first?

Do you think the government just gets funded, the shutdown is over, or do you think that Republicans and Democrats come to some sort of compromise situation to fund the TSA, and thus shutdown still goes on, but TSA gets its funding, and therefore

Oh, so I didn’t even think of that variation of it.

So yes, there’s still a partial shutdown, but TSA at least gets funded.

Yes, I think that’s, I don’t know which one of those, but I would say, I believe this will get resolved this week in terms of, so in other words, they had their deal, Democrats were saying, okay, let’s at least find a way to fund just TSA.

Trump is still saying, I don’t like it, I don’t like it. But I at least saw just a pinch of a hedge in that where he’s just kind of like, I don’t like it, but do what you got to do. Let’s go, I’m sick of this stuff.

It’s always the airports.

It’s always the airports that in the shutdowns.

So, but I kind of think this time around, I think after what we saw in January with ICE, even though that seems to have with the firing of Christy Noem, that seems to have softened a little bit, at least publicly, like the public displays have been,

there’s been a pullback on that. I think it’ll be the latter, meaning that there will be a compromise to pay the TSA and get the airports back up and running again, but the partial shutdown will go on.

Sure, but now I’m just going to be honest, I don’t even remember what’s included in the other partial part anymore. So what is shut down if they… Oh, I guess, because there’s still, I guess ICE is technically not is being funded from old money.

Correct. But, right. But yeah, so I think anyway, I’ll come out, I think by, I think even sooner than for, I think that’s just going to happen.

It’ll be like just puttering along and then it’ll just be, there’ll be a deal because it has to get dealt with. It’s too much money. It’s too embarrassing for the country at this point.

It is fun talking to our international or our non-American colleagues in the morning.

Every once in a while, we’ll ask them. So what’s going on over there? What are you guys seeing about the United States right now?

And they just kind of shake their head and, I don’t know, try to be supportive of their four colleagues in the United States.

Yeah.

So we also usually do a winners and a losers. Do you have a winner of the week, Lex?

My winner would be, I was out to dinner last night with, so both winners and losers are two separate set of friends, but I spoke to, I was out to dinner. They were here, dear friends from Florida.

They were on their anniversary, celebrating their anniversary.

They were flying here.

They were going to a show, and they flew and they had no problem. They were just like, I don’t know, just hopped a plane and showed up, flew into Newark.

Everything was great, and they couldn’t have been at, they looked refreshed and ready to enjoy a show. So I’m like, you guys won. I don’t know, I even walked with them to the theater.

I’m not a theater guy, I don’t know. It wasn’t one of the, I forget, but.

I want to see Operation Mincemeat, that’s why I was curious. I want to, that’s one I want to go see, yeah.

Well, Helen is the theater, my wife Helen is the theater expert, she sees everything, so. And what about Losers?

Losers is my other friend who I thought he was going to be the winner, because so he’s a childhood friend, he’s in private equity, and he I was texting him a finance question yesterday, just because I was trying to get a gut check on something

related to to to a deal that we were potentially reporting on. And he’s like, he texts back, can’t talk, I’m at the airport. And I said, oh, well, I’m interested in that too. I didn’t know he was at the airport.

I was like, I’m interested in that too. How’s the line? And he said, no line, I went through the secret door.

And I was like, what is the secret door? And he writes back, not everyone’s typical experience. So I was like, so he just walked through in five minutes, he got the secret handshake security deal.

And then-

Do we know what it is or how he got that? What is this?

He gets it because he’s a lot of money. He’s an elite flyer.

Okay, all right.

But here’s why he’s not a winner in all of this. Is he was so worried that that deal would not be given all that was going on, that he had to wake up and he wasn’t getting confirmation.

So he woke up at 430 in the morning and got to the airport three hours early. Only to, so he still had the same pain because of the current situation, but he even though he was potentially going to have this sweetheart deal.

So my winners and losers of the week are the same person, and it is Markwayne Mullins. I say that it’s like whenever you, sometimes when you get a job, I’ve had people say to me, congratulations and condolences.

That’s how I feel about this particular gig. I mean, you could not pick a more important, influential, and difficult moment to take over the Department of Homeland Security in the United States.

I mean, it was literally on Monday that he was confirmed.

Yeah, it’s rough timing.

So he is both my winner and my loser for this week. And that’s it, ladies and gentlemen. That is all she wrote for our show today.

If you have any questions or comments, please send them on over to podcasts at skift.com. We will take some time and get you any answers that you may have. And we will see you next week with Seth on the other side of the window.

Thank you so much, Lex, for coming on. Pitching in.

Thank you. It was fun.