When airport security is busiest, by hour and by day
The busiest hour at US airport security is 5 am: 7.6 percent of everyone TSA screens goes through between 5 am and 6 am local time, about 187,000 people on an average day, and 22 percent before 7 am. Sunday and Thursday are the busiest days of the week, within 0.4 percent of each other and at least 27 percent above Tuesday, the quietest. These are TSA's own counts of people screened at 432 airports over 182 days, 22 March to 31 October 2026; they count people, not minutes.
When in the day security is busiest
People screened per hour, averaged over 182 days of TSA counts, 22 March to 31 October 2026, in each airport's own local time. The first row is every airport together. Below it are the busiest 30 airports whose hours from 10 am on are as busy as their morning, or busier. Each row is scaled to its own peak: green is that row's quiet hours, red its busiest.
Tap a cell for its count.
Quiet for that rowIts busiest hourno count
Across the country the busiest hour is 5 am and the counts fall away after the 6 pm hour. At 225 of the 432 airports TSA counts, the busiest hour starts at 6 am or earlier. TSA counts people, not minutes.
Checkpoints that screen more people than most airports
Single checkpoints that would rank among the 30 busiest airports if they were airports of their own, by people screened a day. The last column is where each would sit on the list of every airport TSA counts, 432 of them.
| Rank | Checkpoint | People a day | Of its airport | Would rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DEN West | 34,653 | 53% | 23rd |
| 2 | JFK Terminal 4 Main | 32,486 | 36% | 26th |
| 3 | EWR Terminal C | 30,806 | 46% | 27th |
| 4 | DEN East | 30,802 | 47% | 27th |
| 5 | MCO Gates 1 - 59 (West) | 30,032 | 41% | 27th |
| 6 | MCO Gates 70 - 129 (East) | 29,044 | 39% | 28th |
| 7 | LGA Terminal B | 27,590 | 57% | 28th |
| 8 | EWR Terminal A | 24,799 | 37% | 30th |
People screened at the checkpoint per day its airport was counted, 22 March to 31 October 2026. Only airports with more than one checkpoint are listed; at the rest the checkpoint is the airport. The busiest checkpoints of 2026 ranks every one.
Which day of the week is busiest
People screened across the country on an average day of each kind. The busiest single day counted was Friday 22 May 2026, with 2,908,409 people.
| Rank | Day | People a day | Days counted |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sunday | 2,688,568 | 26 |
| 2 | Thursday | 2,677,789 | 26 |
| 3 | Friday | 2,650,651 | 26 |
| 4 | Monday | 2,592,415 | 26 |
| 5 | Wednesday | 2,269,003 | 26 |
| 6 | Saturday | 2,162,735 | 26 |
| 7 | Tuesday | 2,110,580 | 26 |
Download the hours and the days as CSV, the numbers this page prints, with the window and source on every row.
Questions people ask
What is the busiest day to fly?
Sunday and Thursday, level within 0.4 percent by people screened: about 2,689,000 a day on Sundays and about 2,678,000 a day on Thursdays across the country, at least 27 percent more than Tuesday, the quietest. The busiest single day in TSA's counts on this page was Friday 22 May 2026, with 2,908,409 people screened. The counts run from 22 March to 31 October 2026, so a holiday outside those dates is not in them.
What is the quietest day of the week to fly?
Tuesday, by people screened: about 2,111,000 a day across the country on the Tuesdays counted here, against 2,689,000 on Sundays and 2,678,000 on Thursdays, the busiest. Saturday is next and then Wednesday.
What is the busiest time to fly?
5 am local time, by people going through security: 7.6 percent of everyone TSA screened on the 182 days on this page went through in that hour, and 22 percent before 7 am. After that the counts hold above half the peak through the 6 pm hour and then fall away. At 225 of the 432 airports TSA counts, the busiest hour starts at 6 am or earlier.
When is the best time to go through TSA?
TSA counts how many people go through, not how long they wait, so this page gives no minutes. Across the country the counts fall away after the 6 pm hour, and the morning before 7 am carries 22 percent of the day. At JFK, SFO, MIA, EWR, LAS, SEA, FLL, IAD, and HNL the hours from 10 am on match or beat the morning's, drawn hour by hour on this page. Each airport's own page shows its checkpoints hour by hour, and a live wait where the airport publishes one.
Which airports are busiest in the afternoon or evening?
Among the 30 busiest airports, JFK at 5 pm, MIA at 6 pm, EWR at 3 pm, and IAD at 3 pm, by people screened in an average hour over the 182 days on this page. The country as a whole peaks at 5 am.
Which checkpoint screens the most people?
West at DEN, about 35,000 people a day, 53 percent of the airport. On its own it would rank 23rd among the 432 airports TSA counts. It is one of 8 single checkpoints on this page that would rank among the 30 busiest airports.
The line right now
These are usual hours, not the wait. The national page ranks the airports that publish a live wait time by their longest standard line right now, and each airport's page draws its own checkpoints hour by hour.
Where the numbers come from
- People screened
- TSA's own hourly passenger counts per checkpoint, published weekly in its FOIA reading room. This page uses 182 days of counts, 22 March to 31 October 2026, at 432 airports. Hours are TSA's, local to each airport. Public domain.
- Download
- busiest-times.csv: people screened in each hour of an average day and on an average day of each kind, with each hour's share. Public domain, as TSA's counts are; a link back is welcome.
- Who reads them
- Arcane Digital, which runs waittimes.io, reads every feed every 10 minutes with its own collector and stores the time of each read. The day's reads are checked every night for a feed that has stopped or thinned, and one person reads that report the next morning. Nobody types a number in.
- What we never do
- Turn a count into a wait, or predict one. A busy hour with many open lanes can have short lines.
- Every feed
- How each wait-time feed is read, the TSA counts and who to write to: the sources page.