Atlanta airport travelers should expect crowded security lines Monday

As of 5 p.m., 326 flights departing from Hartsfield-Jackson had been delayed and another 10 had been canceled, according to FlightAware.

Marie Cotter patiently stood in line to drop her luggage at Frontier Airlines around noon Sunday after visiting her family in Athens for Thanksgiving, though there were signs of worry on her face.

Her flight to New York was scheduled to leave Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport at 1:44 p.m. The slow-moving line to check her bags, coupled with the rainy weather, was causing her to have some concerns, she said.

“The lines are a little longer than I expected, because when we left (for Atlanta) on Wednesday, there were no lines in LaGuardia,” she said. “Plus the weather is not so good, so I’m a little worried about turbulence.”

An AJC reporter later saw Cotter walking to security with plenty of time to catch her flight.

Cotter was one of the more than 100,000 travelers projected to pass through security at Hartsfield-Jackson on Sunday, either visitors heading back home after spending the holiday in Atlanta or local residents headed out of town.

Check-in was crowded for every airline Sunday around lunchtime Sunday, but Frontier was the only one with long, winding lines. Delta Air Lines also had a midafternoon slowdown. By 3 p.m., the long lines had cleared up.

Passengers flying on other airlines moved quickly through the crowded check-in process, and signs for TSA checkpoints informed passengers it would take 10 minutes or less to get through the line.

Credit: Maya Prabhu

Credit: Maya Prabhu

Sean Leonard, a Kathleen resident, sent his 13-year-old daughter on a flight to upstate New York with her uncle to visit her grandmother. Leonard was grabbing a quick lunch at IHOP while waiting to hear from the uncle that their flight had taken off.

He said checking in to his daughter’s Delta flight was quick and easy. Leonard said he tends to be loyal to the Atlanta-based airline.

“I’ll pay the extra money (for Delta),” he said, comparing Delta to the budget airlines. “They’re much friendlier, in my opinion. And everything goes much quicker. They were actually great today. We forgot to check a bag and had to go back. They got us right in there, didn’t charge us and then we got her back to security.”

According to a recent analysis of historic TSA data by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Sunday after Thanksgiving last year — Dec. 1, 2024 — saw the most passengers pass through security.

As of 5 p.m., 326 flights departing Hartsfield-Jackson had been delayed, according to FlightAware.

A TSA spokesperson told the AJC that the agency once again projected that Sunday would be the busiest Atlanta security day of the holiday with nearly 104,000 passengers, a spokesperson told the AJC.

If last year’s trends hold, Monday is expected to be the second-busiest day of the holiday weekend for Atlanta security.