War is raging in the Middle East, passengers are waiting in four-hour security lines, airfares are spiking and, now, a deadly runway collision at LaGuardia Airport has renewed questions about the safety of U.S. air traffic control.
All this comes at one of the busiest travel periods of the year. If airline passengers anticipated a relaxing spring break, the uncertainty has left them reeling instead.
“We’re seeing a perfect storm of travel disruption right now,” said Sally French, a travel expert at the personal finance website NerdWallet. “In a lot of ways, travelers are having to grapple with that ‘Should I travel now?’ question on a level not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic.”
U.S. airlines expect more than 170 million passengers to fly in March and April, a new high. More than 2 million travelers have passed through security checkpoints almost every day this month. At the same time, Transportation Security Administration officers, working without pay during the five-week-old partial government shutdown, have called out at record rates, and more than 450 have quit.
This has created an unpredictable experience at airports, with wait times varying wildly by city and day. Travelers have complained about missing flights while stuck in line and sleeping at airports because of flight disruptions. Many have said they are considering canceling upcoming trips.
“This type of dysfunction is not sustainable,” said Geoff Freeman, the president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association. “These are signs of an extraordinarily dysfunctional government. It will lead to people pulling back in travel, and I think we’re seeing some of that now.”
In recent days, travelers said they had endured unnerving scenes at airports around the country: crowds that resembled mobs; lines that snaked around, even outside, terminals; armed immigration officers in bulletproof vests observing passengers.
On Sunday, Andre Mullen, 50, of Rockville Centre, New York, headed to Kennedy International Airport about 2 1/2 hours before his 8 a.m. JetBlue flight to Atlanta. He expected to see a long line. Instead, it was “just a sea of people” with “no lines, no order, no nothing,” he said.
While waiting, he called JetBlue customer service to be rebooked on an afternoon departure, knowing that he’d miss his morning flight. Ultimately, it took him six hours to get to the gate.
“Getting out of New York is on a whole new level,” Mullen said. “It really was a tinderbox.”
Later that night, an Air Canada Express jet and a fire truck collided on a runway at LaGuardia Airport in New York, killing both pilots, injuring dozens and shutting down the airport for hours. Since reopening Monday afternoon, LaGuardia has been operating with one runway, leading to hundreds of cancellations and flight delays on top of the long security waits.
Nina Tichava, 52, slept on a bench at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston after spending five hours in a security line only to miss her plane Sunday. On Monday, as she waited for her rebooked flight home to New Mexico, she wandered around the airport. She said she spotted several clusters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents standing around, many sipping coffee.
Travelers say they are feeling apprehensive about upcoming trips, citing reasons including onerous security waits, airfare pushed higher by soaring oil prices, and safety concerns as the war rages in the Middle East. On Sunday, the State Department advised all Americans abroad to exercise caution.
Leigh-Anne Lehrman, a 57-year-old from California, was supposed to be on vacation with her husband in London this week, but as their travel date approached, she said she became consumed by feelings of anxiety and dread. She canceled the trip at the last minute.
“At first I felt embarrassed to be traveling as an American overseas because of our political situation,” Lehrman said. “Then there was the cancellation of Global Entry and TSA delays, and now with the war, I quite frankly feel unsafe.”
A survey conducted last week of more than 1,000 travelers by Global Rescue, a company that provides evacuation and field rescue services, found that more half said they were at least moderately concerned about being targeted abroad.
“Concern about anti-American sentiment is no longer fringe; it’s mainstream,” said Dan Richards, Global Rescue’s CEO and a member of the Commerce Department’s Travel and Tourism Advisory Board. “That signals a meaningful shift in how travelers are evaluating personal risk tied to global perception.”
Collette, a global tour operator, experienced a 6% drop in new bookings for international travel in the first week of March compared with the same time last year, said Jeff Roy, the company’s executive vice president and chief revenue officer.
Alice Graham and her husband planned three international trips this year, to Europe and Japan, but canceled all of them because of the travel disruptions caused by the war with Iran. Though they booked flexible options, they still paid more than $1,200 in cancellation fees. After seeing the hourslong TSA lines at airports over the weekend, Graham said she felt relieved about her decision.
“It feels way too much of a risk and hassle to leave the U.S. right now,” said Graham, a 46-year-old from Boston. “Planes are dodging missiles in the sky and we started a war, which makes us a huge target.”
Graham said she was considering a domestic trip to the West Coast in the summer if the long wait times at airports improve.
“It feels like the pandemic again,” she said, “when you know in your gut that the best and safest option is to stay at home.”