Holiday Travel Nightmare at Charlotte Douglas International Airport
CHARLOTTE — Most flyers are cognizant of the pain that is holiday travel and do what they can to mediate that. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like prepping and planning are doing much good this holiday season at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
A viewer called Channel 9′s newsroom to tell us it’s the worst line they’ve ever seen on a holiday, even worse than Thanksgiving, which CLT expected to be the busiest day of the year.
There are only two TSA lines open, one of which is exclusive for PreCheck members, the viewer said. Checkpoints 1 and E are open, but the rest are closed. We’ve asked airport officials and TSA to confirm this.
TSA told Channel 9 they’re expecting a busier travel season than last year nationwide, and on the busiest days, the agency will screen more than 2.5 million passengers each day. The agency expects Dec. 21, Dec. 22, and Jan. 1 to be the busiest.
In the time it took to publish this article, the number of delays doubled from eight to 17. American Airlines officials told Channel 9 there are nine AA flights delayed more than 15 minutes from CLT as of 6:45 a.m. They were unable to share how many passengers they expected to fly out of CLT today.
Channel 9 reached out to airport officials and TSA to ask why the other checkpoints are closed, whether this is the most volume of flyers they’ve experienced, and what may be leading to the headaches.
This is a developing story; we will update it as we learn more information.