Where the numbers come from
Every wait time on waittimes.io is published by an airport or by Delta Air Lines. We read each public page every 10 minutes, keep the time of every read, and show that time next to the number. Nothing on this site is predicted.
Airport wait times
One entry per publisher, each feed read every 10 minutes. An airport code links to its page here; a host links to the page we read.
- BWI Marshall Airport
- BWI at bwiairport.com.
- Charlotte Douglas International Airport
- CLT at cltairport.com.
- Cleveland Hopkins International Airport
- CLE at clevelandairport.com.
- DFW Airport
- DFW at dfwairport.com.
- Dallas Love Field
- DAL at dallas-lovefield.com.
- Delta Air Lines
- ATL, BOS, DTW, SEA, SLC at news.delta.com. Delta publishes one table of checkpoint waits for the airports it flies from. We use it for an airport whose own site publishes nothing we may read: Atlanta's terms forbid automated reading, so ATL comes from this table.
- Houston Airport System
- IAH at fly2houston.com.
- MSP Airport
- MSP at mspairport.com.
- Miami International Airport
- MIA at miami-airport.com.
- Orlando International Airport
- MCO at flymco.com.
- Philadelphia International Airport
- PHL at phl.org.
- Phoenix Sky Harbor
- PHX at skyharbor.com.
- Pittsburgh International Airport
- PIT at flypittsburgh.com.
- Reagan National Airport
- DCA at flyreagan.com.
- The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
- EWR at newarkairport.com; JFK at jfkairport.com; LGA at laguardiaairport.com.
How we read them
- Who reads them
- Arcane Digital, which runs waittimes.io, reads every feed with its own collector: software that fetches each page and stores the number with the time of the read. Each feed's reader is tested against a saved copy of the page it reads, so an airport that changes its page produces no reading rather than a wrong one. The day's reads are checked every night for a feed that has stopped, thinned or moved, and one person reads that report the next morning and answers the address at the foot of this page. Nobody types a number in.
- Every 10 minutes, never faster
- Each feed is read once every 10 minutes. The time of the read is stored with every number and printed next to it.
- The public page, as a browser sees it
- We read the page an airport publishes for travellers, or the address that page itself loads its numbers from. Never a page behind a login, and never a site whose terms forbid automated reading: atl.com and flydenver.com are not read for that reason.
- Identified on every request
- Every request carries the User-Agent "waittimes/0.1 (+contact: info@arcanedigital.dev)", so an operator can see who is reading and write to us.
- No reading beats a made-up one
- A page that loads without numbers, or does not load, produces no reading. A number older than 30 minutes says so first, and after two hours without a new one the page shows when the feed last published instead of a number.
- The numbers are the airports'
- We republish the number and its time. The layout, the ranking and the sentences around them are ours.
TSA passenger counts
- Transportation Security Administration
- TSA releases hourly passenger counts per checkpoint through its FOIA reading room, a few weeks after the fact. As work of the United States Government they are public domain (17 U.S.C. 105), and TSA's own policy says its content may be distributed or copied. They are the basis for how busy each checkpoint usually is, hour by hour. TSA counts people, not minutes; nothing on this site turns a count into a wait.
Questions and corrections
- Write to info@arcanedigital.dev
- A wrong number, a feed that moved, or your feed read in a way you do not want: the same address reaches the person who can change it. waittimes.io is run by Arcane Digital.