The TSA Wait Index: best and worst U.S. airports for security lines

The best airports in the U.S. for security lines (2026)

These ten airports post the lowest index scores — short average lines and mild peaks, by our model's typical-day estimate. What the top of the table shares: even at the worst hour of the day, none of the ten breaks a 27-minute modeled wait.

Score = 0.6 × modeled average wait + 0.4 × modeled peak wait, in minutes — lower is better. All figures are modeled estimates from our forecasting model (see methodology below).

The worst airports in the U.S. for security lines (2026)

The bottom ten combine long typical waits with punishing peaks. Honolulu (HNL) anchors the bottom of the index at a modeled 25-minute average and a 40-minute evening peak; Phoenix and Baltimore sit just above it, and Los Angeles (LAX) — the busiest airport in this group — lands fourth from the bottom.

For scale: TSA's own service standard is a wait of under 30 minutes in standard lanes and under 10 minutes in PreCheck lanes. Every airport in this bottom ten has a modeled peak above that 30-minute standard-lane benchmark.

The full 2026 TSA Wait Index, ranked

All 32 airports, best to worst. "Swing" is the gap between the peak and the average — a rough consistency measure; a bigger swing means timing your arrival matters more at that airport. Airports marked ● feed live checkpoint data into our site; the index itself uses the model's typical-day curve for every airport so the comparison is like-for-like.

All values in minutes, modeled estimates from the tsawaittimes.app forecasting model, snapshot July 2026. Nationally, the model's typical day peaks twice — around 8 AM (29 min average across the 32) and again around 6 PM (30 min).

Best and worst by state: Texas, California, Florida

Texas

Austin (AUS) is the worst airport in Texas for security lines on the 2026 index (rank 28 of 32; modeled 23-minute average, 36 at peak). Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) is the state's best at rank 6, with Houston Bush (IAH) in between at rank 13.

California

Los Angeles (LAX) is the worst in California — rank 29 of 32, a modeled 23-minute average and 36-minute morning peak — with San Francisco (SFO) barely ahead at rank 26. San Diego (SAN) is the state's standout at rank 3 overall.

Florida

Tampa (TPA) ranks worst in Florida at 27 of 32 (modeled 23-minute average), while Orlando (MCO) is the state's best at rank 8. Miami and Fort Lauderdale fall in the middle of the national table.

How to use the index (and beat your airport's rank)

A bad rank isn't a sentence — it's a timing problem. Every airport in the index is quietest around 5 AM in the model, and the "swing" column shows where an off-peak arrival buys you the most. Three practical moves:

• Check your airport's live page before you leave. Rankings describe a typical day; your flight happens on a specific one. See Seattle (SEA) wait times or any airport's page for today's picture.
• Dodge the two daily peaks. The model's national curve tops out around 8 AM and 6 PM. Our guide on how early to arrive at the airport turns that into a concrete arrival time.
• Shortcut the line entirely. At a bottom-ten airport, expedited screening pays for itself fastest — compare PreCheck vs CLEAR vs Global Entry.

Methodology

The 2026 TSA Wait Index covers the 32 largest U.S. airports tracked on this site. Each airport's score is 0.6 × modeled average standard-lane wait + 0.4 × modeled peak-hour wait, in minutes; lower is better. The average weights operating hours (4 AM–10 PM) at 1.0 and overnight hours at 0.25. Ties break on average wait, then airport code. The peak-minus-average swing shown in the full table is our consistency read: it is derived arithmetic, not a separate model output.

All wait figures are FIRST-PARTY MODELED ESTIMATES produced by tsawaittimes.app’s own forecasting model (the same Tier-B model that powers the live site), computed 2026-07-03 for the launch set of 32 large U.S. airports. They are not TSA or government measurements. For this snapshot every airport was computed via the model’s deterministic typical-day curve (an overnight lull with ~8 AM and ~6 PM peaks) scaled per airport, clamped to 4–75 minutes; the flight-schedule-density input was unavailable at run time. The national hour-by-hour shape is the model’s real typical-day curve, but per-airport differences come from the model’s seeded scaling — treat per-airport rows as “our model’s typical-day estimate,” never as a measured ranking of airports. Averages weight operating hours (4 AM–10 PM) at 1.0 and overnight hours at 0.25. Standard lanes only; 11 of the 32 airports also have live Tier-A checkpoint feeds (marked “live”). No day-of-week or seasonal term is included. Values rounded to whole minutes.

This is the first edition of the index; we will re-run the model and republish the ranking annually. How the underlying live and predicted data works is documented on our how-it-works page.

Cite or share this data

You are welcome to republish the tables and figures on this page — including in news articles — with a link back. The dataset is released under CC BY 4.0.

Source: tsawaittimes.app — The TSA Wait Index: best and worst U.S. airports for security lines, 2026.
https://tsawaittimes.app/data/tsa-wait-index

Which U.S. airport has the worst TSA wait times?

Honolulu (HNL) ranks last of the 32 largest U.S. airports on the 2026 TSA Wait Index, with a modeled average standard-lane wait of 25 minutes and a modeled peak of 40 minutes around 6 PM. Phoenix (PHX) and Baltimore (BWI) rank just above it. These are modeled estimates from tsawaittimes.app's forecasting model, not TSA measurements.

Which U.S. airport has the shortest security lines?

Seattle–Tacoma (SEA) ranks first of the 32 largest U.S. airports on the 2026 TSA Wait Index, with a modeled average wait of 14 minutes and a modeled peak of just 21 minutes. New York JFK and San Diego (SAN) follow close behind. All figures are modeled estimates from our forecasting model.

How is the TSA Wait Index calculated?

Each airport's index score is 0.6 × its modeled average standard-lane wait plus 0.4 × its modeled peak-hour wait, in minutes — lower is better. The inputs come from tsawaittimes.app's own forecasting model (a typical-day curve per airport, snapshot dated July 2026), covering the 32 largest U.S. airports. It is a model-derived index, not a measured ranking.

Are these official TSA wait time numbers?

No. TSA publishes no national wait-time table — only a service standard of under 30 minutes in standard lanes and under 10 minutes in TSA PreCheck lanes. Every number in this index is a first-party modeled estimate from tsawaittimes.app's forecasting model, and the page labels them that way throughout.