The Worst Time to Fly, Airport by Airport
“Arrive two hours early” is one number for every airport, every day, every hour. It isn’t true anywhere. Below is what BoardFlight’s history-based security-wait model says at 8 US airports, the ones where it has passed an independent check against TSA’s published hourly checkpoint throughput (how the check works).
Figures updated 2026-10-18.1. Timing beats guessing — at the same airport, on the same day
At most of these airports, when you arrive within the day matters more than which day you fly. At John F. Kennedy International (JFK), on an ordinary weekday, the modeled wait goes from about 13 minutes at 5 AM to about 30 minutes at 6 AM: one hour, a very different line. Section 2 shows the same comparison for every airport on this page.
2. The quietest and worst hour at each airport
Each airport is compared only with itself. For an ordinary weekday (Thu, Aug 13, 2026), this is the quietest window during travel hours (5 AM to 10 PM), the worst 15-minute window of the day, and the gap between them. Airports are listed alphabetically. The check behind these figures covers when each airport’s day peaks, so use them to pick a better hour at your airport, not to compare one airport’s minutes with another’s.
| Airport | Quietest (5 AM–10 PM) | Worst window | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austin Bergstrom International (AUS) | the shortest waits of the day come around 7 PM | 23 min at 4 PM | – |
| Boston Logan International (BOS) | the shortest waits of the day come around 10 PM | 15 min at 6:45 PM | – |
| John F. Kennedy International (JFK) | 13 min near 5 AM | 30 min at 6 AM | 17 min |
| John Wayne Orange County International (SNA) | the shortest waits of the day come around 9 PM | 15 min at 6 AM | – |
| Nashville International (BNA) | the shortest waits of the day come around 9:45 PM | 10 min at 12 PM | – |
| Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) | the shortest waits of the day come around 10 PM | 20 min at 7 AM | – |
| San Diego International (SAN) | 5 min near 10 PM | 39 min at 9 AM | 34 min |
| Tampa International (TPA) | the shortest waits of the day come around 10 PM | 29 min at 6 AM | – |
3. The most common bad hour isn’t the evening rush
6 AM is the worst hour of an ordinary weekday at 3 of the 8 airports on this page (John F. Kennedy International (JFK), John Wayne Orange County International (SNA) and Tampa International (TPA)), more than any other single hour, including the traditional evening peak. The first bank of morning departures puts a lot of travelers through the checkpoint in a short window, and in this data it shows up more often than the after-work rush does.
4. Not every airport’s worst day is a weekday
At some airports the worst window of the sample week falls on the weekend; at others, on a weekday. At 2 of the 8 airports, the weekend peak is lower than the weekday peak.
- Austin Bergstrom International (AUS): the worst weekend window runs 9 minutes longer than the worst weekday window (32 min vs 23 min).
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA): the worst weekday window runs 9 minutes longer than the worst weekend window (20 min vs 11 min), the opposite pattern.
What this data is, and isn’t
These figures come from BoardFlight’s history-based security-wait model, read on two fixed sample days and limited to the 8 airports where both that curve and the schedule-based curve behind airport-page charts passed an independent check against TSA’s published hourly checkpoint throughput. The check covers the shape of each airport’s day, meaning when the peak lands, not the exact minutes. These are modeled medians, a planning pattern, not a live queue length. They include no holiday effect.
Use this data
The figures in this study are published as a dataset at github.com/daniel1001a/boardflight-airport-wait-data, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). You may share and adapt it for any purpose, including commercially, with attribution to BoardFlight. The dataset covers more airports than this page shows; hourly figures appear here only for airports that have also passed the airport-page chart check.
The dataset covers 12 airports. This page shows hourly figures for 8 of them. The other 4, Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International (FLL), Washington Dulles International (IAD), Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport / Wold–Chamberlain Field (MSP) and Philadelphia International (PHL), passed the history-based check but not the separate check behind airport-page charts, so the site doesn’t publish their hourly figures.