There was a time, not long ago, when the lines to get into Denver International Airport looked like a Disney World nightmare: Queues of people spilling out of the regular security checkpoint and snaking past baggage claim throughout the terminal.
But DIA finally completed a transformation this year, replacing its two old security screening areas with two more efficient spaces upstairs. The changes promised to move almost twice as many people down to the trains and towards their gates.
A Denverite analysis of TSA wait times suggests the new configuration is working pretty well, even in the face of some big recent pressures.
We scraped airport data for two months.
This started in mid-October, as the longest federal government shutdown in history was getting underway. TSA agents and other federal workers would have to work without pay, and we wondered if there might be disruptions at the airport if people called out sick to go to other jobs — or just stay home altogether.
So we set up a little bot that would visit DIA’s website every 15 minutes and record the minimum and maximum wait times of both the east and west screening areas.
We expected mayhem. But that didn’t happen. While other airports struggled to keep up with passenger volumes in early November, things were business as usual at DIA.
But we still had all this data. So, what could it tell us?
Takeaway #1: Your average wait time is pretty quick.
You might know this if you’ve been through the new East and West security checkpoints, but we have the data to confirm it.
In our observation period, which spanned Oct. 13 to Nov. 30 of this year, DIA’s estimated maximum wait times never exceeded 35 minutes.
That’s notable — not only because the shutdown took place in that period, but so did Thanksgiving, one of the worst times of the year to travel.
Average wait times between the East and West sides were pretty similar, though you might save a couple of minutes if you go West. Average maximum waits on the West side were 5.7 minutes, compared to 7.7 minutes on the East.
Maybe reward yourself with a quick concourse shoeshine with the time you save?
Takeaway #2: The early bird gets… to wait longer?
Within each week of our analysis, we pulled the longest recorded wait times to see when, exactly, they occurred.
We found that the 9 a.m. hour was twice as likely to hold each week’s longest wait times compared to any other point in the day.
Another way to look at this: Average maximum wait times were about 15 minutes long in the 9 a.m. hour, compared to about 10 minutes earlier in the day, and even lower into the afternoon.
Takeaway #3: Wednesday is the easiest day to fly.
We did a similar analysis with days of the week, identifying the top 10 percent of wait times within each week and then seeing which days they fell into.
Maximum wait times for the week were most likely to occur on Mondays and Fridays, possibly representing the peaks of business and leisure travel, respectively. Thursdays and Sundays were also busy.
You are far less likely to encounter the worst waits of the week on a Wednesday. But, again, the airport’s system has been working pretty well, and you may not notice much of a difference between days.
Wait times for Wednesdays came in at about 7.2 minutes in line. Fridays — the worst offenders — still only clocked an average of 9.2 minutes for screenings.
