Passengers at Fort Lauderdale airport starting to see shorter lines during partial government shutdown
The partial government shutdown is still impacting flights at airports across the U.S., including here in South Florida.
But are passengers seeing a glimmer of hope?
Between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. Wednesday, there were lines out the doors of several terminals at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport shortly after TSA lines opened.
At most other times, the lines were empty.
The traffic to get in the airport, however, was continuously backed up throughout the morning.
Passengers that had seen videos of the long lines showed up hours before their flight and were surprised to see the line moving quickly at 7 a.m.
“We prepared pretty good,” FLL passenger says
“From the time we got here, it’s been it’s easy,” Timothy Dupuis said. “We heard other horror stories already that the lines were extremely long, up to a couple hours, and people were missing flights because of it.”
“We saw a lot of Tiktoks the past few days circulating because to a lot of our friends ‘flights got canceled,’ so we tried to plan early,” Cole Sepereck said. “We set an alarm for 4:50, were out the house by five, took an hour Uber ride here, and then the lines aren’t as bad as what we’ve seen because we’ve seen them out the door at early hours. So we prepared pretty good.”
It wasn’t until 10 a.m. that the line in Terminal 3 started to pick up. That’s where CBS News Miami met Sarah Moore.
“Probably should have got here earlier,” Moore said.
Despite some shorter lines, passengers should still arrive at airports early
As of Wednesday afternoon, the TSA agents are still working without pay.
“We appreciate you,” Moore said.
“We know it’s tough times right now,” Dupuis said. “We’ll get through it, as we always do. It’s just going to be a little bit lengthy, but just have a positive outlook on everything.”
Passengers at South Florida airports, including Miami International Airport, are being urged to give themselves plenty of time to get through traffic and snake through the security lines in order to be on time for flights.
