TSA Check Wait Time

Purpose

Given a US airport (IATA code or name) and optionally a checkpoint / terminal and a day-of-week + hour-of-day window, return the current and historical TSA security-line wait times. TSA does not currently publish this data on the public web. This skill documents that gap, the dead-ends future agents should not re-walk, and the only viable fallback paths (MyTSA mobile app — not browseable — and third-party scrapers / crowd-sourced trackers). Read-only.

When to Use

• A user asks "how busy is SFO Terminal 3 on a Friday at 6am?" or "what's the current wait at ATL checkpoint A?"
• A travel-planning agent wants to recommend an arrival-time buffer for a specific airport + day-of-week + hour.
• Any flow that would call a TSA wait-time API if one existed — so the agent fails fast with a clear "deprecated, here are the alternatives" answer instead of looping on 404s.

Workflow

Bottom line up front: there is no public TSA web endpoint that returns current or historical per-airport per-checkpoint wait times as of 2026-05-18. The legacy MyTSA web tool was retired (apps.tsa.dhs.gov/mytsa/wait_times_home.aspx has 302-redirected to https://www.tsa.gov/mobile since at least Nov 2023, verified via Wayback Machine capture 20231116141524). The path implied by the user prompt — https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/times — returns HTTP 404 with TSA's standard "Page Not Found" Drupal template. Same for every plausible variant (/wait-times, /security-screening/wait-times, /security-screening/checkpoint-wait-times).

Given that constraint, the workflow is:

1. Recognize the dead end fast. If asked for TSA wait times, do not issue browser requests to tsa.gov looking for a wait-times widget — none exists. Issuing them just produces 404s and wastes tokens. Skip directly to step 2.

2. Pick a fallback path based on intent. TSA's wait-time data only lives in two places today:

   Caller intent	Best surface	Browseable?
   "What's the historical pattern at SFO T3 on Fri 6am?" (the user's example)	MyTSA iOS/Android app — retains the "Check how busy the airport is likely to be on your specific day and time of travel based on historical data" feature per https://www.tsa.gov/mobile	No — native app only, no public REST/JSON endpoint, no web mirror
   "What's the live wait at ATL right now?"	Third-party crowdsourced trackers (tsatracker.com, flyindex.org/airports/{iata}/tsa-wait-times/, flightcheck.live/tsa-wait-times). These re-derive wait times from a mix of user reports, airline data, and historical TSA throughput stats. They are NOT TSA-published	Yes — each has its own SKILL surface; a future agent should produce per-site skills (e.g. tsatracker.com/check-wait-time) rather than treating them as a TSA proxy
   "How many people did TSA screen yesterday nationwide?"	https://www.tsa.gov/travel/passenger-volumes — daily total nationwide checkpoint count, table with two columns: Date, Numbers (e.g. 5/17/2026 → 2,887,942). Updated Mon–Fri by 9am ET	Yes (200, plain HTML table) — but it answers a different question than the prompt

3. Return a not_supported outcome with the explanation. The honest contract is to fail with structured information so the calling agent can route the user appropriately rather than hallucinate numbers.

If the caller insists on a TSA-published answer

Direct them to https://www.tsa.gov/mobile and the MyTSA App on iTunes (itunes.apple.com/us/app/mytsa/id380200364) or Google Play (play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gov.dhs.tsa.mytsa). Then return { "success": false, "reason": "tsa_web_tool_deprecated", "fallback": "mytsa_mobile_app" }.

If the caller will accept third-party data

The two highest-coverage third-party endpoints (live as of 2026-05-18, returned by Browserbase Search) are:

• https://flyindex.org/airports/{iata-lowercase}/tsa-wait-times/ — per-airport page with both current estimate and historical hourly heatmap. Covers all major US airports (atl, dfw, den, ord, lax, jfk, sfo, sea, clt, mia, phx, iah, bos, ewr, lga, dca, mco, …). Each page is fully server-rendered HTML — extractable via browse cloud fetch without Verified. Anti-bot: none observed.
• https://tsatracker.com/airports/{iata-lowercase}-tsa-wait-times — same shape, slightly different historical-window UI.

Build a separate per-domain skill for whichever third-party you choose; do not put third-party scraping under tsa.gov/ in the catalog — the data is not TSA's.

Site-Specific Gotchas

• The canonical URL in the user prompt 404s. https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/times returns HTTP 404 with <title>Page Not Found | Transportation Security Administration</title>. Confirmed 2026-05-18 via browse cloud fetch. This is not a transient block — TSA's CMS does not have a node at that path.
• Every other plausible TSA wait-time URL is also dead. Tested 2026-05-18: /wait-times (404), /travel/security-screening/wait-times (404), /travel/security-screening/checkpoint-wait-times (404), apps.tsa.dhs.gov/mytsa/wait_times_home.aspx (302 → /mobile), apps.tsa.dhs.gov/mytsa/airport_details.aspx?ap=ATL (302 → /mobile), apps.tsa.dhs.gov/MyTSAWebService/GetTSOWaitTimes.ashx?ap=ATL&output=json (302 → http://www.tsa.gov). Don't waste turns probing more variants — TSA actively redirects the entire legacy app surface to a static "use the mobile app" landing.
• The deprecation is old. Wayback Machine capture 20231116141524 already shows the same 302 → /mobile redirect, so the web tool has been gone for >2 years. There is no realistic chance it returns; treat the dead end as permanent.
• MyTSA mobile app is not browseable. The /mobile page only advertises the native iOS/Android download. The app's airport-busy data is fetched over a proprietary internal endpoint that is not documented and is gated by mobile-app cert pinning + user-agent checks — out of scope for a browser-driving agent.
• /travel/passenger-volumes is NOT a substitute. It returns one row per day with a single nationwide total (column header Numbers, e.g. 2,887,942). No airport, no checkpoint, no hour, no wait-time minutes. If a caller asks for SFO Friday 6am, this dataset cannot answer.
• Third-party trackers (tsatracker.com, flyindex.org, flightcheck.live) are NOT TSA-published. They derive estimates from user reports, airline data, and historical TSA throughput stats. Their numbers may correlate with reality but should never be labeled "TSA reported wait time" — call them "third-party estimate, source: {site}". Build a per-domain skill if you want this data; do not silently substitute for TSA.
• The DHS-owned https://www.dhs.gov/check-wait-times page (a top search result for "TSA wait times") is a hub page that links to CBP border-crossing wait times and airport-arrival CBP processing — not TSA security checkpoint waits. Do not confuse these; they are different agencies and different datasets.
• The TSA news/blog tag https://www.tsa.gov/blog/tags/wait-times returns press releases ("TSA prepared for busy travel season"), not data. Skip it.
• Sandbox connectivity caveat for the generator agent. Outbound DNS to connect.*.browserbase.com is blocked from the Vercel Sandbox environment used to build skills, so live-browser verification (browse open --remote) of any TSA-owned page is not possible from that sandbox; only browse cloud fetch (which hits api.browserbase.com) works. This did not affect verification for this skill because all candidate URLs were 404/302 at the HTTP layer — no JS-rendered SPA element to wait for. Future regeneration attempts should use the same browse cloud fetch probe pattern before assuming a live tool exists.

Expected Output

Three distinct outcome shapes. The first is what this skill produces today. The other two are forward-looking — if TSA restores the tool, or if the caller opts into third-party data and the agent has access to a separate per-domain skill.

Outcome 1 — not_supported (current default)

{
  "success": false,
  "reason": "tsa_web_tool_deprecated",
  "details": {
    "requested_url": "https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/times",
    "requested_url_status": 404,
    "legacy_url": "https://apps.tsa.dhs.gov/mytsa/wait_times_home.aspx",
    "legacy_url_status": 302,
    "legacy_url_redirects_to": "https://www.tsa.gov/mobile",
    "deprecated_since_at_least": "2023-11-16",
    "verified_at": "2026-05-18"
  },
  "tsa_published_alternatives": [
    {
      "name": "MyTSA mobile app",
      "surface": "iOS / Android native app",
      "data_available": "historical hourly busy-ness per airport (the user's exact question), live checkpoint info per airport",
      "browseable": false,
      "ios_url": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mytsa/id380200364?mt=8",
      "android_url": "https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gov.dhs.tsa.mytsa&hl=en"
    },
    {
      "name": "TSA checkpoint travel numbers",
      "surface": "https://www.tsa.gov/travel/passenger-volumes",
      "data_available": "daily nationwide aggregate screening count only — no airport, no hour, no wait minutes",
      "browseable": true,
      "answers_user_question": false
    }
  ],
  "third_party_alternatives": [
    { "site": "flyindex.org", "url_template": "https://flyindex.org/airports/{iata}/tsa-wait-times/", "data": "current + historical hourly", "tsa_published": false },
    { "site": "tsatracker.com", "url_template": "https://tsatracker.com/airports/{iata}-tsa-wait-times", "data": "current + historical hourly", "tsa_published": false },
    { "site": "flightcheck.live", "url_template": "https://flightcheck.live/tsa-wait-times", "data": "current + historical hourly", "tsa_published": false }
  ]
}

Outcome 2 — success (if TSA restores the tool — speculative schema)

{
  "success": true,
  "airport": { "iata": "SFO", "name": "San Francisco International" },
  "checkpoint": { "terminal": "Terminal 3", "name": "T3 Main Checkpoint", "lane_type": "standard" },
  "current": { "wait_minutes": 12, "as_of": "2026-05-18T18:34:00Z" },
  "historical": {
    "window": { "day_of_week": "Friday", "hour_local": 6 },
    "samples": 52,
    "wait_minutes": { "min": 3, "median": 14, "max": 41, "p90": 28 },
    "source_period": "2025-05-01 → 2026-05-01"
  },
  "source": "tsa.gov"
}

Outcome 3 — success_third_party (if caller opts into third-party data and a per-site skill is invoked)

{
  "success": true,
  "airport": { "iata": "SFO" },
  "checkpoint": { "terminal": "Terminal 3" },
  "current": { "wait_minutes": 12, "as_of": "2026-05-18T18:34:00Z" },
  "historical": {
    "window": { "day_of_week": "Friday", "hour_local": 6 },
    "wait_minutes": { "min": 3, "median": 14, "max": 41 }
  },
  "source": "flyindex.org",
  "tsa_published": false,
  "disclaimer": "Third-party crowdsourced estimate, not TSA-published"
}