LaGuardia security lines get longer as shutdown drags on; investigators remove wreckage of Air Canada jet, truck from runway

In the hours before workers removed a crashed Air Canada jet from LaGuardia Airport's runway Wednesday evening, the security check-in line inside was a giant, sluggish snake, slowed not by the weekend accident but a slower-motion crisis at the federal agency responsible for security screening. 

Port Authority officials did not respond to a question about how the removal, shortly after 5 p.m., of the jet and the fire vehicle it had crashed into might affect airport operations, which had been impacted by the presence of debris and investigators on the tarmac.

The plane's two pilots were killed in the Sunday night crash. A spokesperson for the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the cause of the crash, said in an email that "investigative activity on the runway is ongoing" and the plane was being taken to an undisclosed facility for further examination. 

For much of the day, the scene inside LaGuardia's Terminal B was one of travel purgatory. A main line stretched across the terminal's eastern half in four coils, while a separate precheck line ran the length of the terminal's western half. It made six switchbacks in the cavernous indoor space next to the terminal parking garage.

A reporter heard airport officials estimating the precheck wait time at an hour, two to two-and-a-half hours for everyone else. Babies wailed. People in line took cellphone pictures of the expansive queue.

"This is crazy. This is the longest line I've ever seen," said Riliegh Flowers, 20, a certified nursing assistant trying to get home to Davenport, Florida, on a 7 p.m. flight. It was shortly before 3 p.m., but an airport official had just warned her and her companion: "You want to be on the other side of this."   

At 11 a.m., Pratik Wanare, 32, an information systems manager, stood near the line’s end and said he was trying to return home to Canada with his wife and their  1-year-old son.

"I'm anxious," he said. "I don’t know if I will make it to my flight," which was due to leave shortly after 1 p.m.

As Wanare stood on line, Ha Nguyen McNeill, the Transportation Security Administration's acting administrator, told a U.S. House committee that in some of the nation's airports as many as 40% of TSA workers were not showing up for work. They have not been paid since the mid-February shutdown of Homeland Security, TSA's parent department. About 480 TSA workers have quit, some are selling their blood to make money, and those who continue to work have been subject to a fivefold increase in assaults since the start of the shutdown, she said.

If the shutdown continues, McNeill said, some airports may need to close, and even if the shutdown ends, it will take four to six months to train new hires. There were significant concerns, she said, about "our security posture and what the long-term impacts of the shutdown" will be on the TSA workforce. 

Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, also speaking at the hearing, said shutdown disruptions, paired with an expected surge of international visitors for this summer's soccer World Cup, presented "a dire situation."

By evening, a deal between Republican lawmakers and Democrats to fund Homeland Security did not appear imminent. Senate Democrats have refused to fund the department without changes to immigration enforcement procedures. President Donald Trump has so far declined to support any prospective deal.

LaGuardia's website no longer reports security wait times for any of its terminals, citing "rapid change based on passenger volumes and TSA staffing," but not all travelers were dissatisfied.

Trey Sprouse, 30, an insurance inspector from upstate Pawling bound for South Carolina, was less anxious than Wanare, perhaps because he and his wife had arrived at 9:30 a.m. for a 2:40 p.m. flight.

"The line is extremely long but it moved quicker than I anticipated," he said. "They brought us snacks": Chex Mix, fruit snacks and water, he said. Sprouse said the wait would have to get considerably worse before he’d be dissuaded from flying. "It still saves time over a 10-hour drive."

As passengers waited, at least 20 armed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in tactical gear roamed the terminal, sent by Trump to airports across the country as TSA agents continued to call out sick.

Earlier, on the runway outside, several people wearing FBI Evidence Response Team jackets joined members of the NTSB, which is leading the investigation.

In a midday email, an NTSB spokesperson declined to say how long the investigation would take.

"The schedule for various aspects of the investigation is very fluid and timeline is not set in stone," the spokesperson wrote.

"NTSB investigators along with other agencies including the FBI are continuing to collect evidence from the debris field. It is typical that the FBI lends it resources to the NTSB to assist with evidence collection. This will probably continue for the next few days," the spokesperson wrote.

By 6 p.m. Wednesday, flights into LaGuardia were delayed at their origin by an average of more than four hours, with 267 flight delays and 338 cancellations, according to flight tracker FlightAware. The airport led the service’s "Misery Map" with 62% of inbound flights canceled or delayed and 49% of outbound flights canceled or delayed.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

By Nicholas Spangler

nicholas.spangler@newsday.comspanglernewsday

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.