Operations at major United States airports are returning to normal as TSA officers begin to receive pay once again.
More than 50,000 TSA workers have been left unpaid since mid-February, causing mass disruptions in airports across the U.S.
Airports in Baltimore, Houston, New York, New Orleans, and Dallas, which all reported hours-long lines during the partial government shutdown in recent weeks, all reported short lines on Monday.
The shutdown caused some of the longest security lines in the TSA’s almost 25-year history, with the longest lines topping four hours.
Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, where lines snaked outside a terminal and down escalators to the airport tram last week, reported that wait times dropped back down to five to 10 minutes around noon Monday.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which had briefly suspended reporting its wait times on its website and advised travellers to arrive four hours before their flights, removed its online warning and reported wait times of around five minutes on Monday, around noon.
This comes after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order at the end of last week that ordered TSA workers to get paid, despite a failure to get Congress to end the 45-day partial government shutdown.
On Sunday, there was still a 10.6% callout rate, but this was a decrease from the agency’s highest callout rate of 12.4% on Friday, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
TSA workers are to be paid from Monday.
Following the lack of pay, more than 500 TSA officers left the agency, according to Homeland Security spokesperson Lauren Bis.
Despite TSA officers being paid, border czar Tom Homan said ICE agents may still remain at airports until normal operations are resumed.
“It depends how many TSA agents come back to work, how many TSA agents have actually quit and have no plan of coming back to work. I’m working very closely with the TSA administrator and the ICE director to decide what airport needs what,” he said.
The deployment of ICE agents to airports has been heavily criticised by unions and democrats.
