In what proved to be the kind of small divine intervention that gives one comfort the man upstairs is, indeed, looking out for them, I groggily awoke around 8:00 a.m. Sunday despite setting my alarm for 10:00 just a few hours before.
Southwest Airlines flight 1553 was scheduled to depart from New Orleans to D.C. at 12:35 p.m. This was the fourth time I was flying in six days, and I hadn’t had any TSA troubles yet. I planned to get to the airport a little earlier than usual, but nothing too crazy.
Before going back to sleep, I checked the bachelor party group chat, and everything changed. Our forward scout Will, who had booked a 5:50 a.m. flight home like an absolute psychopath, sent us photos from the TSA line around 4:00 a.m. Miles long. I quickly opened the Everything App (X) and searched “MSY”. Horror stories were quickly flooding in. I realized I had overlooked a key factor: spring break travelers.
Having been out on Bourbon Street until roughly 3:30 a.m. with the groom-to-be, my wits weren’t fully about me. I busted open the two tactical Excedrin Extra Strength packets I had stowed in my backpack for this very moment, swigged down the last bit of bottled drinking water I had, freshened up in the bathroom, and called my Uber.
I hurried downstairs and spotted one of my compatriots passed out face down on a couch. His flight was at noon. It was approaching 0845 CDT. It was over for him, so I left him behind — it’s what he would’ve wanted.
My Uber arrived and the real challenges began to stack up. My driver, pronouns stated in his Uber bio, was not aware there was a government shutdown affecting airport activity until I mentioned it.
“Are you f*cking sh*tting me? Again?” he screamed, immediately growing belligerent just moments after jovially asking me if we had gone to any “t*tty bars” (we did not).
In Uber to the airport. I broke the news to my driver that there is a DHS shutdown. He immediately started yelling about Trump, “we gotta yank this guy out of office man, he’s fucking up our country!”
The best argument against democracy is a conversation with the average voter
— Dylan Housman (@Dylan_Housman) March 22, 2026
I explained to him it was just for DHS, which of course included TSA. “We gotta get this guy outta here man, he’s f*cking up our country!” he bellowed about President Trump. I didn’t have it in me to correct him. His blue delusion wouldn’t go far in deep red Louisiana anyway, and I was fighting for my life in the back seat of his Subaru.
We arrived at the airport. Southwest flight 1553 departed in three hours and 35 minutes. I entered the front door of the terminal and spotted the proverbial huddled masses, snaking in line after line around the floor. I glanced up to the second level, where the lines continued. I asked an employee where the line began, and she pointed me to the parking garage.
Lines in the parking garage for TSA at the New Orleans airport. (Dylan Housman)
I walked out to the garage and assumed my spot in the labyrinth. It snaked around floor P1 at least 4 times before making its way inside. I had received a heads-up about the garage situation from the groom, David, who had arrived a couple of hours prior for his 10:00 a.m. flight. He said he was still outside.
Despair and chaos have fully gripped the crowd. “My flight is boarding now,” I heard one man say to an airport employee nearby. “He’s a goner,” I turned around and said to the two men behind me. It turned out they would be in due course as well.
“Ground exfil is proceeding well,” read a text in the group chat from Hayden, who was making the eight-hour drive back to Nashville. Lucky bastard. There was no sign of the copious amounts of Ole Miss fraternity brothers and their dates we had met the night before, either. A six-hour drive back to Oxford sounded nice right about now.
One hour into the snake. Southwest flight 1553 departed in two hours and 10 minutes. I assume at this point I am thoroughly cooked and begin looking at alternative flight options.
Direct to DCA, Baltimore, or Dulles? Nothing.
One-stop connections? Nothing.
Flights from Baton Rouge, Mobile, or Lafayette? Nothing.
The reality of potentially spending my Sunday night at the New Orleans airport Hilton begins to set in.
“I’ve just got to make it through to the gates,” I say to myself. “So many people are gonna be missing flights, I’ll be able to get on something else on standby.”
Then David throws me yet another curveball. “They’re not letting anyone in who has missed their flight already,” he texted me. “I had to book a standby seat on a full flight just for TSA to let me through.”
There were no other flights for me to book, not even for standby. I hurriedly searched for the cheapest flight departing MSY that day in the evening, just so I would have a boarding pass to show the TSA legionnaire manning the scanner. $130 for a Frontier flight to LAX at 7:00 p.m., connecting via Midway, it was.
(Dylan Housman)
Southwest flight 1553 departed in one hour and 20 minutes. I’ve reached the threshold of the airport terminal. A crying child snakes past me in the other direction with her family. Defeated passengers, left for dead, sit on the floor of the Hudson News shop inside. We get to the bottom of the escalator to head up to the *actual* TSA line, where I’m promptly cut off by a dreadlocked man with three small children. I decide not to call the police, for the sake of the children.
I can see the scanners. Maybe I actually will make it. The line is moving quickly.
“I need to see your boarding pass,” the TSA agent says. I show him. Southwest flight 1553, which is leaving in 40 minutes. I’m through. Bags in the bin. Water bottle poured out. Portable charger through the machine. On the other side, I emerge as my flight begins boarding.
I make it onto the flight as one of the last to board. Total time spent in the TSA line ended up at about two hours and 45 minutes. I spent the taxi time writing a letter to my senators, pleading for mercy to never experience this hell again.
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