As U.S. airports struggle with fewer Transportation Security Administration workers during a partial government shutdown, some social media users asked why a fee collected on every airline ticket isn’t being used to pay TSA agents.
Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport advised travelers to arrive at the airport four hours before their flights. Social media posts show security lines at ATL wrapping around baggage claim and outside the building. Houston and New Orleans airports warned travelers about significant wait times and closed checkpoints.
TSA agent absence rates have tripled since the Feb.14 start of the shutdown, the Department of Homeland Security told Business Insider. Unpaid workers are frustrated; in some cases TSA employees report taking other jobs to pay their bills.
Starting March 23President Donald Trump stationed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in airports to arrest undocumented immigrants and help with security.
A group critical of Trump, the Alt National Park Service, wrote in a March 23 Facebook post that TSA agents are “funded by the mandatory security fee attached to every ticket you buy.”
Brendan Keefe, an Atlanta television journalist, echoed that assertion March 22.
“TSA is largely funded by a tax on every ticket,” Keefe posted on X. “It adds $5.60 to every one-way ticket & $11.20 to roundtrips. Everyone in line right now is already paying the TSA fee, even for free reward travel. The government has previously diverted that money to the Treasury. Pay the agents.”
The passenger fee is real, but federal law prevents it from being used to solve the current funding crunch.
What is the passenger security fee?
Airlines collect a security fee, implemented after 9/11, from passengers when they buy their tickets. Air carriers then forward the proceeds to TSA.
Those fees have increased twice since inception, most recently in 2014 when Congress raised them to $5.60 per passenger for each one-way trip or $11.20 per round-trip flight.
The 2013 law that dictates airline passenger fees allows only a portion of the funds to go directly to TSA. A fixed share is first deposited into the federal government’s general fund, with the aim of reducing the federal debt. Federal law requires that $1.64 billion in passenger security fees be directed to the government’s general fund in fiscal 2026 and $1.68 billion in fiscal 2027.
Separately, the law says that $250 million must be used to reimburse airports for expenses related to machines TSA uses, such as baggage screening and explosive detection devices.
Once those requirements are met, the passenger fee money flows to TSA. In recent history, the proceeds have not been sufficient to cover TSA’s costs, according to the Congressional Research Servicea nonpartisan arm of Congress.
In fiscal year 2024, TSA’s costs totaled about $9.8 billion. Of this amount, passenger fees paid for $3.5 billion, or about 35%. The remainder was covered by congressionally appropriated funds — the type that are on hold because of an ongoing dispute between Trump and congressional Democrats.
Could the Trump administration move funds around on a short-term basis?
The government couldn’t temporarily shift money to ease the shutdown-related TSA shortages, said Joshua Sewell, director of research and policy for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that tracks the federal budget.
Neither the language in federal appropriations bills nor the section of the U.S. Code that authorizes the fee would allow such a transfer, Sewell said.
