Gaeilge said:

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Mas89 said:

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Flying out of IAH soon. Have tsa precheck but would getting Clear help with a shorter line?
Other ideas?

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Depends on if the *******s that work at Clear are actually doing anything. If I didn't have it for free, I wouldn't have it at all.

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It's normally not worth the money, line ends up longer than precheck half the time (pre government shutdown)

I've got Clear since work pays for it. I only use it if it's shorter than Pre.

I'd say I use clear about 10% of the time.

C precheck was 9 minutes this morning at 5:45. The line was out the queue but they were moving people through pretty quickly.

They haven't been using the touchless ID at IAH every time I've gone through recently.

Dw2022 said:

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C precheck was 9 minutes this morning at 5:45. The line was out the queue but they were moving people through pretty quickly.

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I'm not sure that's a good thing right now.

ETA:
I meant this as I hope they're not trading performance for timeliness due to the staffing shortages while we're at a high alert for sleepers and lonewolf operations.

Even though TSA has like a 95% fail rate on tests.

10 minutes in pre-check for terminal a.

Is this A?

🚨HOLY CRAP!!!

The Houston TSA line has now stretched to a mind-blowing 150 minute-wait-time and has snaked around the airport, down an escalator and into BAGGAGE CLAIM!!!

THIS IS INSANE!!!! pic.twitter.com/MhPTc9qttS

— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) March 20, 2026

Looks like E

Was paranoid so pulled into parking garage at 6:02 am - was through security at 6:15 am after parking, checking an oversized bag, and going through the Pre line in C - longest wait was for the elevator in the garage. Settled in for 2.5 hours wait until boarding lol.

I fly weekly, and I flew to/from 4 different airports in the last 2 weeks.

Obviously there is something going on, but this is a "truth" is in the middle situation.

I typically fly out of IAH really early, and security wait times are pretty constant regardless of holidays, previous strikes/shut downs, weather, etc. I will preface my experience is through precheck and only visual indications of the lines for the poors.

The same amount of employees are working at IAH. Same amount lines are open, same amount of scanners / metal detectors are open. It's probably taking 3x longer. Meaning less than 5 min to 15 minutes or so. I think people are freaking out because of the media and showing up way earlier than normal and causing the huge backups because of showing up un-naturally early. I flew out a few hours later than normal one day, and in the midst of all this, the security lines were near empty.

Another airport I flew out of had massive TSA wait, before I got into the line, I walked another 30 feet and saw that people were just following the herd and getting in the massive line, got in that line and went straight through.

Final flight home yesterday, small regional airport. Same staff, same amount of TSA, marginally larger security line. It's one where they only run one line and they give you the card for precheck. I get up to the baggage scanner and it just stops. No tsa people are doing anything different, the line starts backing up. The person is still sitting behind the screen but not doing anything, maybe 60-120 second goes by, and finally the person running the people scanner asks the baggge scanner if something is wrong. That person erupts into "I'm only one person, I can only do so much, etc". Scanner starts running again and everything back to normal.

I'm sure they're pissed off about not getting paid, but this whole crisis is getting created by the media and executed by TSA employees. If I wasn't getting paid, I'd stop working too. The other problem is people are just ok with waiting in longer lines and aren't saying or doing anything about it. I don't know what the right answer is, but at the end of the day our inept govt needs to get it to together and quit the game playing so we can move on…

It would be interesting to show how much this is "costing" people in time lost. If you took the average person hourly rate and multiplied it by the added wait time and multiply that by daily fliers.

Yeah but you're like a famous composer and musician and stuff.

maroon barchetta said:

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That's a lot of words to say "Because Democrats"

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Don't want to turn this into the politics board, but I'm an equal opportunity accuser.

It sucks to have to lean right to stay away from the left.

2 wings on the same messed up bird.

How much of the wait increase is due to spring break travel?
I hate flying March through April just because of this.

Last week I flew BNA-DEN(DIA).
Pre-check I saw nothing iut of the norms... in fact due to maintenance delays, I gotta to go through denver tsa 3 times yesterday... again no real wait.
But the normal "screening" was a little longer both travel days.... I also couldn't get the vehicle i wanted in denver; due to spring break.

I think its a combo of spring break travel and media wanting to stir the pot.

StillNotAnAggie said:

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Terminal B said 15 minutes. And the line was to the door. I paid for Clear instead of waiting. That's the news in the middle, sadly none of the girls from the other thread.

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In Terminal A there are 2 security points. What people don't realize is that you can use either North or South and just walk to your gates. We left on that day when that picture was taken and the regular TSA line where Pre Check is was shorter than Pre Check. So you had Zen in one side and Thurnderdome in the other,

Oldest had a 10am departure heading back to school out of B at IAH. Woke up very early to keep a tab on website and Pre in A never got above 15 minutes. Was showing 3 minutes when we said goodbye in the drop off line at 7:45am and he said it was spot on accurate with a text.

AgCPA95 said:

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Oldest had a 10am departure heading back to school out of B at IAH. Woke up very early to keep a tab on website and Pre in A never got above 15 minutes. Was showing 3 minutes when we said goodbye in the drop off line at 7:45am and he said it was spot on accurate with a text.

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C was apparently way off today. Showed 13 min but our friends said it was closer to 45 (precheck)

Lol. Just cancelled my trip to the MW. I'm not gonna deal with this *****

CLEAR will not operate on Monday

PreCheck is only available in Terminals A and C and will close at 10:30 a.m.

Standard screening is available in Terminals A, C and E

For flight questions, please contact your airline.

Check estimated wait times:https://t.co/DQg3pzrJxG pic.twitter.com/LEnKcfWUnE

— Bush Airport (@iah) March 23, 2026

Is ICE coming to help?

Houston (IAH) continues to lead America in the LONGEST TSA lines.

More than a 3 hour wait!! https://t.co/dK6adeicQm pic.twitter.com/GfWhyU1kUC

— Will Kunkel (@WillKunkelV) March 23, 2026

Terminal A, 5 minutes ago. I've never seen so many people sleeping in the airport as I just saw right now. F'ing brutal. Came from Minneapolis and their lines fluctuated between 5 & 10 minutes for regs. She told me it would take longer to walk to other security than wait in the normal line.

StillNotAnAggie said:

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Terminal A, 5 minutes ago. I've never seen so many people sleeping in the airport as I just saw right now. F'ing brutal. Came from Minneapolis and their lines fluctuated between 5 & 10 minutes for regs. She told me it would take longer to walk to other security than wait in the normal line.

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Crap I didn't think about the possibility of people sleeping in line from the previous day.

I fly out super early Tuesday and figured it would likely not be bad yet but that doesn't mean anything if there is a line of people from the day before.

I had parking shuttle drop me off at Terminal A. Got into pre check line at 5:10 and i was through in about 10 min.

Regular screening looked like the pics above.

Just went through C. Got here around 430 for 8am flight. Took about 45mins through regular line. It was already out the door at 5am.

Any idea why IAH is worst in nation?

C precheck was out the door just now

If you have touchless precheck go to A. They let you skip the line. Took me 3 minutes just now

Dw2022 said:

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If you have touchless precheck go to A. They let you skip the line. Took me 3 minutes just now

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Just opted in. Thanks!

aggiedata said:

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Houston (IAH) continues to lead America in the LONGEST TSA lines.

More than a 3 hour wait!! https://t.co/dK6adeicQm pic.twitter.com/GfWhyU1kUC

— Will Kunkel (@WillKunkelV) March 23, 2026

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IAH with the longest wait times in the country, so DHS sends ICE to augment TSA operations at ... Hobby. Hobby has some of the shortest wait times, so unless they are send the actual TSA people to IAH, this is just stupidity.

Touchless was the line I used. Looks like they closed precheck at A sometime after I got here.

Any insider info about precheck closing at 10:30AM today, does that necessarily indicate it will follow the same schedule tomorrow? Or is it closed for good until this mess is solved?

No updates via IAH official twitter yet.

Some Twitter posts make it seem they closed it early.

Meanwhile, precheck is not open at terminal A at IAH. The TSA line goes down to the subway stop. pic.twitter.com/7QisNb9wqh

— amanda moore 🐢 (@noturtlesoup17) March 23, 2026