Shutdown could lead to airport chaos on Super Bowl Monday

Visitors to Atlanta in town for the Super Bowl, here’s some advice for getting through Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport’s security on the Monday morning after the game: leave for the airport at halftime.

Everyone else, anywhere in the country, who’s flying on that Monday: bring a good book and a lot of patience to your local airport.

While “perfect storm” is both a cliche and an uncomfortable metaphor for air travel, it fits for the situation shaping up on Monday, Feb. 4 at the world’s busiest airport. Start with your typical start-of-the-business-week travel. Add in more than a 100,000 visiting passengers, bleary-eyed with either celebration or dejection. Filter the majority of them through a single security checkpoint. And then factor in that the people working that checkpoint might not have been paid for more than a month, if they show up at all, thanks to the ongoing federal government shutdown.

It’s going to be a hell of a Monday.

Shutdown + Volume = Long, Long Delays

Even under the sunniest scenarios, the Super Bowl is a phenomenal logistical challenge. Atlanta’s Super Bowl host committee expects more than a million visitors to the city during the week of the game. An estimated 200,000 passengers will arrive every day of the weekend leading up to the game, a 33 percent increase over standard numbers. Hartsfield-Jackson is expecting an additional 1,500 arrivals and departures each day. On the Monday after the Super Bowl, a day Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms dubbed “Mass Exodus Monday,” the city projects 110,000 passengers will travel through the airport.

That kind of volume would present a serious test even to a highly motivated, fully paid security staff. But the government shutdown — whose nuances we will not argue here — has left 800,000 federal workers without paychecks. Some are sitting at home, but others, deemed essential personnel, are working without pay. Transportation Service Authority employees, responsible for maintaining security at the nation’s airports, fall into that latter category.

TSA employees are forbidden by law to strike. But as the shutdown reaches the one-month mark with no end in sight, many TSA employees are staging impromptu “sick-outs,” calling in sick as a form of silent (and absent) protest, and it’s tough to blame them for being frustrated. Earlier this week, reports indicated that the absentee rates across TSA’s 51,000 employees were about 6.8 percent, up from 2.5 percent on the same days last year. The result has been what you’d expect: the machinery of the screening process grinding to a near-halt.

This week’s delays could be a grim preview

Delays on Monday at Hartsfield-Jackson reached from the security line all the way through the concourse and into baggage claim, a Moebius loop of passengers waiting to get on flights mingling with passengers arriving to claim their baggage. Atlanta reported delays of 88 minutes, the longest in the nation. As recently as Thursday morning, traditionally a quieter day for business travel, passengers reported hour-long delays even in TSA pre-check lines.

Hartsfield-Jackson officials declined comment to Yahoo Sports on Wednesday on possible shutdown-related delays. Earlier in the week, Elise Durham, the airport’s director of communications, told U.S. News & World Report that the airport will be bringing in 1,800 volunteers to help passengers throughout the airport. Durham also noted that the TSA had committed to sending additional resources to Atlanta even before the shutdown. “That commitment still stands,” Durham said, “and we expect to have additional TSA officers to support the increased operations.”

Without injecting politics into your football any more than it already is, it’s worth noting that the Super Bowl/TSA situation might be the key to unlocking this entire shutdown crisis. The Washington Post’s Robert Costa notes that Republican sources have hinted that only public pressure — spurred by outrage at flight problems — might bust the gridlock:

If that’s the case, the Monday after the Super Bowl might be the flashpoint. Airport troubles in Atlanta cascade across the entire country, as missed connections and delayed flights pile up at gates from JFK to DFW to LAX. If you’re flying on that Monday, download some movies and podcasts and get yourself a comfortable set of headphones right now.

The only fight in the country more watched than the one happening on Super Bowl Sunday is the one happening now between Capitol Hill and the White House. It’d be a bit of slow, grinding synchronicity if they overlapped in the Atlanta airport.

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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.

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