ATLANTA — When Ivan Padilla stepped out of his Uber at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Friday morning, he thought the security line ended near the entrance.
"After I checked in, it was outside that door, all the way back there," he said. "Pretty insane."
Padilla, who arrived about two hours before his flight, soon realized he had underestimated the wait.
“I slept through my alarms,” he said. “(But) earlier this week, I was in Boston and SFO (San Francisco). I travel a lot for work, and all those airports seem fine. Like there’s no line. So I kind of risked (it). I don’t know, let’s see how real social media is, you know? ... I definitely should have come a little earlier than I did.”
Scenes like that have become increasingly common at airports across the country as the Transportation Security Administration grapples with staffing shortages during a partial government shutdown.
