The Truth About TSA Wait Times Traveling Between Minnesota, Florida

Sadly, it seems like you can't scroll through social media right now without it turning into a doom-scrolling session, with excessive amounts of negative news and videos dominating social media content.

One topic that seems to pop up consistently is videos of airports throughout the United States showing people waiting in TSA security lines for 4 hours or more due to staffing shortages caused by the partial government shutdown.

I admit, those posts started to concern me since I recently had a trip planned that would have me leave Minnesota's MSP airport just before 1 pm on a Friday for Fort Lauderdale, where I would get on a cruise ship for a week and return home from Florida the next Saturday, departing around 2 pm.

I even saw a video that was supposedly filmed at FLL, the Fort Lauderdale airport, that I would be traveling through, showing the place overrun with people returning from cruise ships. They were all experiencing excessive TSA wait times.

I certainly wasn't going to cancel our family trip over videos on social media, because I know you can't trust much of what you see online. So, I did some planning ahead and ventured out to see what my experience would be like, and it was surprising.

Preparing For This Trip and Future Trips

My wife was already TSA Prechecked, but the kids and I were not because we only travel once or twice a year. However, based on the airport videos on social media, I decided to get us all prechecked. I had heard some airports aren't even opening precheck lines right now, but I didn't care; maybe I'd get lucky.

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The fact is, even before recent stories about crowded airports, the security lines could be incredibly long at MSP and other airports I've been through, so being prechecked would hopefully help on this trip and in the future.

I also explored ways to expedite luggage check-in, such as the Delta curbside check-in option, so I wouldn't have to wait as long in lines to get our bags checked. Most airlines have ways to expedite that process.

Leaving Minneapolis, Minnesota

Normally, people are advised to arrive at the airport 2 hours early for domestic flights, but we were told that these are not normal times, so we should double that and arrive 4 hours early. Our travel agent even suggested 5 hours early.

However, I'd heard MSP wasn't bad, so 5 hours early was not going to happen. However, since we were leaving midday on a Friday during Spring Break, we decided to arrive just under 4 hours early, around 9 am.

We had our luggage checked in with Delta within 35 minutes of arriving, and then it was off to the dreaded TSA security area, wondering just how long those lines would be, even though we all had TSA PreCheck designations on our boarding passes.

Much to our surprise, there wasn't anyone in line for TSA Precheck, only two friendly agents waving us in. I glanced over at the other, non-precheck, security area, and at that time, I counted fewer than 20 people in line.

We were all completely through the security process in about 5 minutes. So, our longest wait of well over 3 hours would now be spent waiting to board our plane. Thankfully, MSP has a lot of dining options, so we all had lunch, and my wife and I had a few cocktails (don't judge, it was Day 1 of vacation), so that time went by fairly quickly.

I give MSP and Delta Airlines an A+ for our departure experience. As I sat on the plane, I wondered if we had just gotten lucky and huge, angry lines would await us later in Fort Lauderdale.

Leaving Fort Lauderdale, Florida

After a fabulous week of fun in the sun, courtesy of Princess Cruises, it was time to leave the new ship and head back home. As the shuttle bus drove to the Fort Lauderdale Airport (FLL), I remembered the video I saw of that place that showed TSA line madness.

However, it wasn't even 9 am, and our flight was around 2 pm, so even if those videos were accurate, we had a lot of time. Especially since Princess Cruises has a fantastic EZCheck service, where you each pay $25 for the cruise line to take your checked luggage the night before and check it with your airline for you.

This program is only offered at select airports and for select airlines, but we were lucky that it was offered for Delta Airline flights departing FLL. So, we left our checked luggage outside our cabin door on Friday night, and the next time we saw it was in Minneapolis. That saved us the line to check our bags at the airport.

So, we walked into the airport in Fort Lauderdale and headed straight for the TSA area. Thankfully, the PreCheck lines were open, and while there were more people there than when we left MSP, it wasn't nearly as bad as what I had seen on social media.

We were through TSA in about 30 minutes, with the biggest issue being people forgetting to remove things that trigger the detectors, like belts and other clothing. It was an overall efficient process in the precheck area.

Once in our gate area, with now over 4 hours to wait to board our plane, I spoke with other travelers in the little restaurant/bar who had been traveling throughout the United States and beyond, including a man on his way back home to Singapore.

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Everyone commented that they had not experienced the excessive wait times and things that have dominated social media; they said all said their traveling experience had been normal for the most part.

As people continued to arrive in our gate area, some said the TSA wait time had grown to over an hour in the main line, and about 45 minutes for TSA Precheck, but not the excessive times shared by others online.

The Moral Of The Story

Ultimately, I had a great trip and enjoyed a surprisingly efficient time going through both the Minneapolis and Fort Lauderdale airports, especially considering the videos seen on social media.

Now, do I think all those videos are fake, featuring footage taken years ago from different airports than they claim to be? No, I don't doubt that some airports, such as JFK in New York, ATL in Atlanta, and MCO in Orlando, are experiencing moments when travelers are faced with excessive wait times.

However, that is not the case at every airport, so don't take the social media bait and think that travel has come to a standstill in the United States. It has not. I tend to talk to a lot of people on vacation and on the cruise ship, I met people great people from Boston, Tennessee, Georgia, and more. They all had similar airport experiences as I did.

I do think it's worth it to get TSA Pre-Check and explore the options your airline might have to expedite the luggage check-in process.

Also, be sure to check TSA wait times for your specific airports at the times of day you'll be there, and don't stress over what you hear is happening at places you're not even going to be. Like me, you may be surprised at how normal the experience is at your airports.

That being said, I'd still err on the side of being at the airport too early in case things change on the days you're there.

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This trip experience reaffirmed to me how unreliable and misleading social media really is. Are there excessive lines, wait times, and bad experiences out there? Absolutely, that has always been the case.

However, you only see the worst of it on social media, which can lead to the misconception that this is happening everywhere at all hours of the day, and I've seen for myself that this is not true.