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Travelers wait in line at security checkpoints at Pittsburgh International Airport on June 26. Pittsburgh International Airport officials are preparing for a busy summer travel season, and the long lines might get worse before they get better. But relief is coming.
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Pittsburgh International Airport and TSA are bracing, and preparing, for a heavy summer rush

Redmond Bernhold/Post-Gazette

Pittsburgh International Airport and TSA are bracing, and preparing, for a heavy summer rush

Officials continue to advise travelers to arrive up to three hours before flights

Tim Eckel stood in the U.S. Transportation Security Administration airport checkpoint Wednesday morning at 6:15 a.m., waiting to navigate the long security lines on his way to New York for a business engagement.

The wait wasn’t as long as he expected — not after the airport issued an advisory Monday telling travelers to arrive up to three hours early for morning flights — but it was still an inconvenience.

“This is the longest wait I’ve had here,” said Mr. Eckel, 44, of North Huntington, as the line inched forward.

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Pittsburgh International Airport officials are preparing for a busy summer travel season.

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And the long lines might get worse before anything gets better.

This past May was the busiest in the airport's history, and airlines are offering more seats than ever this summer, airport spokesman Bob Kerlik said.

“We are going to be experiencing record-breaking crowds this summer in terms of the number of passengers passing through the checkpoint as well as the number of seats,” he said.

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The airport has added several nonstop flights in recent months, including to San Diego, Nashville and Iceland in partnership with airlines.

“The increase in passenger volume is a result of additional flights that have been added by airlines to accommodate traveler demand,” TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said in an email.

In July, the airport is expecting several airlines to offer more seats, or capacity, than ever before. They include Southwest, with 298,000 seats; American with 262,000; Spirit with 144,000; Frontier with 49,000; and Breeze with 29,000.

Monday was the busiest day ever at the airport since officials began tracking numbers in 2019. In general, Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays are the airport’s busiest days, Mr. Kerlik said.

TSA is making changes to the checkpoints at Pittsburgh International Airport to address early morning logjams that have resulted in long delays and missed flights.
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TSA changing Pittsburgh International Airport security checkpoints to handle early morning crowds

Other airports are also seeing increases. 

Airlines for America projected 271 million passengers this summer, a new record. Before the pandemic, TSA screened 2 to 2.5 million passengers daily on average. On Sunday, TSA screened 2.99 million travelers — a single-day record.

TSA expects to screen over 32 million passengers between June 27 and July 8 — a 5.4% increase from last year, according to a press release.

Relief on the way

But officials at the airport and TSA are taking steps to move travelers through the airport without delay, in the short and long term.

On Thursday, TSA announced that it is making changes to the security checkpoints to ease the early morning logjams that have resulted in long delays and missed flights.

Starting July 8, TSA will use the airport’s alternate checkpoint on the ticketing level of the landside building exclusively from 4 a.m. to 7 a.m. to screen travelers enrolled in its PreCheck program. There will be no PreCheck lanes open at the main security checkpoint in the building during those times. Those enrolled in CLEAR, another program that involves expedited screening, will continue to use the main checkpoint at all times, according to the TSA.

Longer term, construction of a new $1.6 billion landside air terminal — which will include more security checkpoints — should make traveling to and from Pittsburgh much easier, Mr. Kerlik said.

“In addition to the expanded security checkpoints, the passenger experience will be one that is much more streamlined,” Mr. Kerlik said. The baggage system will also be brand new and faster — “Twice as fast as the current system,” he said.

The new terminal is expected to open in 2025, according to the airport’s website.

Pittsburgh’s airport was originally built as a hub airport, designed for passengers traveling through Pittsburgh who did not need to go through security. Today, the airport is no longer primarily a hub, and nearly 10 million passengers are screened each year in a space designed only for five million screenings, Mr. Kerlik said.

“The existing terminal was built as a hub with a focus on the connecting passenger. The new terminal will be built with a focus on the Pittsburgh passenger, streamlining the passenger experience and making it much faster for their journey,” Mr. Kerlik said.

The airport authority board said Friday at its regular meeting that construction is 68 percent complete, including a new parking lot. Mr. Kerlik said the new terminal is “emblematic of the thriving region as we are today.”

Until then, expect long waits — in its announcement Thursday, TSA repeated the airport’s advice to arrive up to three hours early.

Travelers are taking note. On Monday, a Reddit user wrote that the security checkpoint line was “out to the long-term parking lot” in the early morning.

On Wednesday morning, even the PreCheck line was moving slowly. When a TSA officer announced that the alternate security checkpoint had no wait, many travelers left their lines and ascended the stairs.

By 6:35 a.m., only two people remained in the non-PreCheck queue.

Rather than the wait times, Kurt Limbach, 68, of Mt. Lebanon, expressed annoyance about the teeming parking lots. When he arrived at the airport, he said, the lots were full so he had to find off-property parking and take a five-mile shuttle to the airport.

Mr. Limbach also said that he found the new terminal construction “totally unnecessary.”

“We have a perfectly good airport that’s spending a lot of money they don’t need to spend,” he said.

— Hudson Warm: hwarm@post-gazette.com; Redmond Bernhold: rbernhold@post-gazette.com.  

First Published: June 28, 2024, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: June 29, 2024, 1:52 a.m.

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Travelers wait in line at security checkpoints at Pittsburgh International Airport on June 26. Pittsburgh International Airport officials are preparing for a busy summer travel season, and the long lines might get worse before they get better. But relief is coming.  (Redmond Bernhold/Post-Gazette)
Lines form at Pittsburgh International Airport's security checkpoint at 6:15 a.m. on June 27. Airport officials are advising travelers to arrive up to three hours before departure for early morning flights because of the long lines.  (Redmond Bernhold/Post-Gazette)
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