The Department of Homeland Security has been shuttered for more than a month as congressional lawmakers remain at an impasse over funding for the agency. The shutdown has left Transportation Security Administration workers without pay for weeks, which has prompted mass callouts, excessive wait times, and winding security lines for travelers across the country with no clear end in sight. There are signals that lawmakers could be close to an agreement with a two-week holiday recess looming, and on Thursday night President Trump announced that he would sign an executive order to pay TSA agents. But it’s unclear whether he has the legal authority to do so, and such a move still wouldn’t resolve the underlying impasse.

Earlier this week, I spoke with Sally French, a travel expert and co-host of NerdWallet’s Smart Travel podcast, about the state of this crisis. We discussed how early you should get to the airport, why Houston’s airport has been so hard hit, and how long it might take conditions to return to normal once the shutdown ends.

Wait times have varied wildly across the country, with some passengers reporting quick 45-minute trips through security and others, in places like Houston, waiting for hours. Why is there such a difference depending on location? I was looking into the Houston thing. For the TSA workers, a lot of it comes down to cost of living, how far they have to commute. With any job, there is a cost to getting there, whether it’s public transit or driving, and you calculate, Is that worth it? Is the time to actually get to my employer worth it? What’s the opportunity cost of me working somewhere else? Ultimately, TSA workers are humans, and they can go get jobs somewhere else. So you just have to look at the market conditions of what’s happening in Houston in particular.

Lines seemed to be easing up in some places earlier in the week. Is there any sign that the recent deployment of ICE agents to airports helped with that?These are consistent with traditional travel patterns. And, in fact, if you really want to go on a math mission, TSA puts out their numbers of how many people pass through airport security every day, and we know Tuesday, Wednesday, even Thursdays are lighter days to fly. We just see many more people traveling on Fridays, Sundays. You get that pattern of people flying out for the weekend, people returning for the week ahead, and those are patterns that we have seen since forever.

As someone who has been following this industry for some time, how do these current airport conditions compare to shutdown and funding lapses of the past? This one is interesting because we are approaching what was the longest shutdown in history, which also just recently happened. So it’s the same employees who are now being faced with this multiple times. I think for a lot of these people, they’re wondering, Is this an agency that I want to work for if I’m going to continue to not be getting my paychecks and, for a lot of people, not being able to pay credit-card bills?

I’m sure you’ve seen the numbers of callout rates are especially high at places like Houston or JFK. I’m flying out of JFK on Friday, and I’m already kind of nervous about how early I need to get there. On the other end, the experience that I had in San Francisco was very fast and efficient because they employ private screening instead of using the TSA. And I do kind of wonder if we’re going to see more airports seriously consider switching to private screening, even if it’s a big effort.

What are the possible implications if the situation remains unresolved through the month or longer?We can only expect that callout rates are going to get higher. More employees are going to quit. I think they’re saying between 300 and 400 TSA employees have quit, which is actually a very, very, very small number in the percentage of overall people who work for the TSA. But we can expect that to go up, obviously, as these people do have to make mortgage payments and credit-card payments and all of that. I would expect lines to get longer. We see this with so many government shutdowns, where it’s just a matter of when the public gets bothered enough. That’s typically when Congress really starts to move because ultimately, the public is who voted for Congress, and so Congress does kind of have to respond to their people. And it’s just a matter of, at what point do people really get fed up enough?

You mentioned private security. There are 20 airports throughout the country that use it instead of TSA. How do those locations compare to the typical airport experience?On a lot of levels, I think a regular person wouldn’t even notice the difference. I live in San Francisco and most people just refer to it as “I’m going through TSA.” It very much functions like the TSA, but they’re privately employed and all of those people are getting paid, and that’s the most important thing. Those airports do tend to skew smaller. I would say the exceptions are SFO and Kansas City International Airport.

Is it possible that we could see a push from some airports to move toward private screening companies to avoid this situation in the future? Airports have sought to switch for many years. The challenge is actually making it happen. It’s a lot of work. You can’t just say, “Let’s get rid of these TSA employees and bring in our private employees tomorrow.” You have to go through this whole application process, the TSA needs to approve it, and you need to find a private security company that’s authorized to offer these services. The TSA has the power to approve airports’ ability to do this, but it will make its own organization smaller by allowing it. And who wants their empire to be smaller? And, in fact, in 2011, TSA denied six airports the ability to use private security.

There are also a lot of labor questions involved. TSA employees are paid by the government, but with privatization, the contract would typically go to the lowest bidder, and the lowest bidder is likely paying those employees less. So I do think there are some valid questions around this. But these employees have not been paid for the past month, and this has happened three times. So when are the trade-offs no longer worth it?

Is it possible some airports close temporarily? I hesitate to say that that would happen. Ultimately, people need to go where they’re gonna go, and it’s just a matter of how long they’re going to wait in line. You see this with any line psychology at a theme park. Some people are willing to wait three hours for the roller coaster, and some people say, “That’s crazy. I would never wait three hours for a roller coaster. Let’s just go eat food.” You’re going to see that same thing with the airport. And some people really need to fly because they have an emergency or they’re literally moving.

But I think what we’re going to see are the broader implications. Spring break is coming up, and that’s elective travel. I can also have an awesome spring break an hour drive from my house. So I think we’ll see a lot of travelers opting out of spring break, and that’s going to have its own impacts on the economy. The travel industry is so huge, and some cities are wholly dependent on travel. Those are the things that I’m worried about.

Once lawmakers are able to come to an agreement, will it take long for conditions to return to normal? It’s definitely not going to go back to completely fast, speedy security on day one. As I mentioned, we have lost employees, and the TSA is saying themselves that it takes months to train somebody. You still don’t know if these people have taken on other jobs and are still calling out to work two jobs at once. And many of the employees still working right now are probably getting increasingly burnt out. Again, they’re humans, and it’s not unreasonable for them to think, Finally, I got a paycheck. I just need to go take a vacation myself. So the day the shutdown ends, I would not expect lines to immediately shorten.

What’s your advice for someone planning to travel in the next few days?One of the things that you can do is you can look to your airport social-media accounts. Many of them are posting what their wait times are like, and some have websites that list wait times. The TSA itself operates a website that does this, but that website is not up to date right now, of course.

The other things that are just important to know: Are you going to be able to get on a flight if you miss it? And understanding what travel insurance covers. Travel insurance does not necessarily cover known events, and what we may see is many travel-insurance companies denying claims because this government shutdown is a known event. So don’t assume you can just miss your flight and get the money back someway, somehow. We are, though, seeing many airlines being very forgiving of people who miss flights. They’re offering to rebook them on the next available flight. So basically, stand by for that next flight that goes out. The challenge is knowing when that is.

At SFO, my completely nonscientific sample size is I was in the airport lounge and I’ve never seen it so crowded, and I have to imagine it was because everybody actually made it through security fast at SFO. But they were prepared, so they got to the airport three hours early. And these people who used to sit in the lounge for 30 minutes are now sitting in the lounge for three hours, making it really crowded. So, I would also say, do prepare to get to the airport early.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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