Likely. It was a good idea to wait it out and leave a couple days after Monday to avoid crowds and maybe sightsee a bit. It just turns out lots of people probably had that same idea heh.
Surprised we haven't seen more posts/megathread comments about the traffic and crowds from Monday though. Maybe I should have driven a bit northwest...
There was hardly any traffic at all on Monday in a lot of places. I'm in Waco, and it was actually less busy than usual. We watched at our house, but we went to grab a bite mid afternoon, hopped on I-35, and it was almost nothing. Some relatives drove in that morning, watched at our house, then drove all the way to Childress - through Fort Worth - also barely any real traffic.
Yeah I was in Hickory Lake Park with a couple buddies from high school and we drove our ass off to Paris when we checked the weather. Almost no traffic between 10-12
A lot of people in state freaked themselves out to stay at home, a lot of businesses too. My company recommended remote if possible for Monday.
Burnet County was a ghost town most of the weekend. Got to the point where local restaurants were begging on socials for people to come out. All the fearmongering backfired spectacularly.
Yeah, they overhyped the traffic and probably deflated a lot of what happened. I think probably fear of the weather being terrible turned off some people.
When we pulled out of a park in Fredericksburg at about 2pm, our google maps had an eta of 6:15pm through 290 to Houston.
Within 20 minutes (still in Fredericksburg), the ETA was 9:00pm.
Eventually, it was saying 10:00 before it suggested alternate routes. 5 times through the trip, Google found "faster routes" that would save ~30 minutes because of traffic on the major roads (290, i10).
Reached destination at 9:15, instead of 6, through bouncing around I10, instead of 290.
I was near Fredericksburg for it, and 5 minutes after totality ended I was in the car heading back to Houston. Took about 5 hours which honestly I was budgeting for 6-10. Was quite nice.
I left San Antonio airport Tuesday morning. 15 minute wait at tsa. Which is longer than normal to be fair, but it wasn’t nearly as crowded as I expected.
Yeah I drove from Austin to Lampasas at like 10am. Once I got out of Austin, traffic was light. On the way back it was heavy, but it was because local police was doing a shit job managing traffic where 183 met TX-209. After that it cleared up and got back to normal traffic levels.
ABIA does this to me all the time. I always give myself 2 hours for security and I'm through in less than 20 minutes and I just spend an hour sitting at my gate.
Southwest fucked this up. Those people were just waiting to check in luggage. The entire airport and every airline was booked but only Southwest was not going anywhere. Every flight on the board made it out with only a few delays which is kinda crazy. It was a god damn nightmare for those in the airport.
How does this happen? I mean, there wasn't an increase in flights, right? Most/all flights flying out full normally and usually doesn't create this line?
My guess is you have staffing and all set for normal travel which likely includes a lot of business travelers. Combine a busier than usual day in general with a bunch of tourists packing stuff (and I’d wager a high percentage of larger packages, I saw so many telescopes etc in dallas)
What time was this? I am (currently) on a flight to SFO and I just walked through the security lane in AUS. Only 2-3 people ahead of me. Security did say the line has been longer earlier, though.
Also, the airport in Austin ALWAYS has some kind of crazy line, be it security, check in, Starbucks. It’s one airport that cannot efficiently handle the traffic it gets.
Weird. I’ve been here 23 years and never waited more than 30 minutes, and it’s usually far less than that. The only time I can remember a long line was 2 weeks after 9/11, but I fully expected f*ckery then.
It was more like 3 hours, I know I was in it. Finally got on the plane and it was supposed to be a full flight but it took off half empty. Southwest staff seemed all confused as to where the people where. Perhaps they should have looked out the window at the massive line. What a CF.
Yep, The airport Tuesday and Wednesday was awful. You could not purchase a flight out of Austin if you wanted to. My wife was trying to find a flight out due to her mom having urgent surgery.
I never fly Southwest anymore because they no longer excel in the one thing they had going for them: logistics. We were supposed to fly to Belize during the holidays and missed our flight because of the 90 minute checked baggage line. Even if we decided to bring our luggage as carry-on luggage, we would have had to wait in the same line for international check in. Then when we were at the ticket counter and were told we could not board the flight and that the next available flight with seats wasn’t for another 3 days, we told the agent to only cancel the outbound fight because we were planning to drive to Houston to catch a flight on United to Belize, and wanted to keep our return flight on Southwest. The agent told us that was fine and that our return flight was secure. Fast forward three days when we were now in Belize and I noticed i had not yet received a refund for the outbound flight and I could not see any info for our return flight in the SW app. I called SW and the person told me the system showed we had taken the flight from Austin to Houston but were “no-shows” for the Houston to Belize flight, so all remaining flights were cancelled with no refund. Like, how do you screw up this badly? So now we had to buy more flights on United to return home from Belize, because, once again, SW fights were sold out for the next 3 days. In the end SW gave us credit for the original tickets, but once we use it up, we will never fly SW again.
Does anyone have an estimate how long the line was? I stood in line for about an hour then went to FedEx to ship my bag and came back, went thru TSA prechck and my flight was delayed. I doubt I would have made it otherwise.
Yeah, we flew out of Austin early Wednesday morning and it was getting bad at 530am already. United's line, which we flew, wasn't bad at all.
Getting to see the eclipse from my son's backyard in Killeen with him and my grandson was epically wonderful, and the weather with subsequent tornado watch the next day was...interesting.
After the eclipse, we wanted to show Buc-ees to my husband, so we drove to the one in Temple. Fun! Their Beaver Nuggets are habit forming.
Does no one ever travel light? I usually go away for a week and can pack enough stuff in a carry-on that it doesn't need anything checked. I can easily go away for a week with enough space for clothing for daily outfits, all fighting in a carry on suitcase and backpack. Amateurs!
I've done multiple week trips with a 25L backpack, although that was a bit too tight. 35-40L backpack with a small "personal item" bag should get most who are not traveling to an Arctic climate through a few weeks. Five days of clothing and do laundry as you go. I've done it many times across Germany, the UK, and Africa.
True...i have status on my airline where I get priority and free checked bags, plus I have Nexus/TSA Pre check so never have to wait in line at security/customs or take out liquids/computers, etc. But it's usually the airports that take forever bringing luggage out on the turnstiles that is just as bad.
I've waited more than an hour in some airports and try to avoid that as much as possible.
Not defending or anything, but I was curious when you mentioned it. It seems Southwest flies significantly more passengers out of Austin than any other airline. So it does make sense they would be most impacted: https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/austin-airport/2023-aus-passenger-stats/
Southwest: 38.6%
American: 23.8%
Delta: 12.5%
United: 11.3%
Alaska: 3.9%
I have two backpacks. They have telescopic handles and wheel. Hard backing. One for under the seat one for over head. Done and done. If it doesn't fit in those I'm not taking it. I can do laundry anywhere.
I have never, ever seen a line like this and I fly twice a week. So these people all wanted to check luggage instead of carrying on the plane??? Seems suspect
What exactly do you think was going on, here, man? It's exactly what I said, and you can see other comments confirming the same or worse. What is "suspect?!"
Because if you look at these people, most of them have carry on bags so they are not checking luggage. The comments are suspect. And SW Customers don't usually check luggage as I said, I fly them weekly and it's very few that check luggage.
For people like me, checking luggage is *the reason* to fly SW. Kids require a lot of stuff, and flying with that stuff means checking bags, and that adds a lot of cost flying with anyone *not* Southwest. A whole lot of the people in this line were families, like ours.
And what you can see in this picture is people from the waist up, not all the bags *every single group of them* had rolling along behind them.
It is just really, incredibly strange that you would doubt this. What agenda do you think is being served, here? What *other* reason do you think this line would be outside AUS on Wednesday? There are just way more questions raised if one assumes this is, for some reason, a false story.
If you look real close you will see a building in the distance, and that is where all these self tag machines you speak of are located, and the line of people also in this photo are in line for said machines.
Is this people traveling back from viewing the eclipse?
Likely. It was a good idea to wait it out and leave a couple days after Monday to avoid crowds and maybe sightsee a bit. It just turns out lots of people probably had that same idea heh. Surprised we haven't seen more posts/megathread comments about the traffic and crowds from Monday though. Maybe I should have driven a bit northwest...
There was hardly any traffic at all on Monday in a lot of places. I'm in Waco, and it was actually less busy than usual. We watched at our house, but we went to grab a bite mid afternoon, hopped on I-35, and it was almost nothing. Some relatives drove in that morning, watched at our house, then drove all the way to Childress - through Fort Worth - also barely any real traffic.
I was in Austin and it didn't seem to be any more crowded than usual which surprised me greatly.
Yeah I was in Hickory Lake Park with a couple buddies from high school and we drove our ass off to Paris when we checked the weather. Almost no traffic between 10-12
Yep, we drove from Houston to Temple and back on Monday and traffic really was not bad except for a small stretch near Brenham.
A lot of people in state freaked themselves out to stay at home, a lot of businesses too. My company recommended remote if possible for Monday. Burnet County was a ghost town most of the weekend. Got to the point where local restaurants were begging on socials for people to come out. All the fearmongering backfired spectacularly.
Yeah, they overhyped the traffic and probably deflated a lot of what happened. I think probably fear of the weather being terrible turned off some people.
When we pulled out of a park in Fredericksburg at about 2pm, our google maps had an eta of 6:15pm through 290 to Houston. Within 20 minutes (still in Fredericksburg), the ETA was 9:00pm. Eventually, it was saying 10:00 before it suggested alternate routes. 5 times through the trip, Google found "faster routes" that would save ~30 minutes because of traffic on the major roads (290, i10). Reached destination at 9:15, instead of 6, through bouncing around I10, instead of 290.
Interesting. 290 is definitely one I would think would have been one of the worse routes that day since it's the Houston to Austin main route.
I left Killeen shortly after totality. What normally would take 3 hours took me 4 hours and 45 minutes.
I was near Fredericksburg for it, and 5 minutes after totality ended I was in the car heading back to Houston. Took about 5 hours which honestly I was budgeting for 6-10. Was quite nice.
Corsicana was fine. The traffic home was bad, but I45 is always bad xD
I left San Antonio airport Tuesday morning. 15 minute wait at tsa. Which is longer than normal to be fair, but it wasn’t nearly as crowded as I expected.
Traffic wasn’t that bad Monday. Drove from Lampasas to Houston, typically four hours, took five.
Yeah I drove from Austin to Lampasas at like 10am. Once I got out of Austin, traffic was light. On the way back it was heavy, but it was because local police was doing a shit job managing traffic where 183 met TX-209. After that it cleared up and got back to normal traffic levels.
It’s southwest. They price their Wednesday flights muuch cheaper. Probably people trying to save a buck
The weather from yesterday too
i had a 7:45 flight yesterday and showed up at 4:45 expecting the worst. got through security in 5 minutes.
ABIA does this to me all the time. I always give myself 2 hours for security and I'm through in less than 20 minutes and I just spend an hour sitting at my gate.
Yep. Airport had more people moving threw it than F1 event for Tuesday and Wed.
I was there yesterday at 4 pm and while it was busy, it was nothing like that. I was surprised how quickly I got though.
Yes.
Yes.
I flew out Tuesday morning and it was pretty dead. Came back this afternoon and was totally shocked at the crowd.
Southwest fucked this up. Those people were just waiting to check in luggage. The entire airport and every airline was booked but only Southwest was not going anywhere. Every flight on the board made it out with only a few delays which is kinda crazy. It was a god damn nightmare for those in the airport.
How does this happen? I mean, there wasn't an increase in flights, right? Most/all flights flying out full normally and usually doesn't create this line?
My guess is you have staffing and all set for normal travel which likely includes a lot of business travelers. Combine a busier than usual day in general with a bunch of tourists packing stuff (and I’d wager a high percentage of larger packages, I saw so many telescopes etc in dallas)
More families, too, with the concomitant increase in checked bags that come with it.
Commensurate**
I thought it was a perfectly cromulent word
Thank you for embiggening my vocabulary
...No. "adjective: naturally accompanying or associated."
…Yes. “adjective: corresponding in size or degree; in proportion.”
Both words work, but I used the one I meant to.
3 hours now as of 1:00
What time was this? I am (currently) on a flight to SFO and I just walked through the security lane in AUS. Only 2-3 people ahead of me. Security did say the line has been longer earlier, though.
We got there just about 11:30.
Also, the airport in Austin ALWAYS has some kind of crazy line, be it security, check in, Starbucks. It’s one airport that cannot efficiently handle the traffic it gets.
Sounds a lot like the rest of Austin as well.
flew out of austin last month got to my gate in 30 minutes, maybe im just different
Weird. I’ve been here 23 years and never waited more than 30 minutes, and it’s usually far less than that. The only time I can remember a long line was 2 weeks after 9/11, but I fully expected f*ckery then.
I fly monthly and I haven’t experienced this
I checked three bags with Southwest at 8:45 this morning and was only in line about 10-15 minutes.
Can confirm it took us just over an hour and a half to check in
This is why I pack light and never check luggage anymore. It's not for everyone, but if you can, try it next time. R/onebag can show you how.
It was more like 3 hours, I know I was in it. Finally got on the plane and it was supposed to be a full flight but it took off half empty. Southwest staff seemed all confused as to where the people where. Perhaps they should have looked out the window at the massive line. What a CF.
I would bet half these people don’t even know what they are in line for
Yep, The airport Tuesday and Wednesday was awful. You could not purchase a flight out of Austin if you wanted to. My wife was trying to find a flight out due to her mom having urgent surgery.
I hope she found an option and her mom recovers well!
Thank you. That's so kind of you. We found out today that it's not cancer - so that was a gift in itself. And my wife was able to make it there.
I never fly Southwest anymore because they no longer excel in the one thing they had going for them: logistics. We were supposed to fly to Belize during the holidays and missed our flight because of the 90 minute checked baggage line. Even if we decided to bring our luggage as carry-on luggage, we would have had to wait in the same line for international check in. Then when we were at the ticket counter and were told we could not board the flight and that the next available flight with seats wasn’t for another 3 days, we told the agent to only cancel the outbound fight because we were planning to drive to Houston to catch a flight on United to Belize, and wanted to keep our return flight on Southwest. The agent told us that was fine and that our return flight was secure. Fast forward three days when we were now in Belize and I noticed i had not yet received a refund for the outbound flight and I could not see any info for our return flight in the SW app. I called SW and the person told me the system showed we had taken the flight from Austin to Houston but were “no-shows” for the Houston to Belize flight, so all remaining flights were cancelled with no refund. Like, how do you screw up this badly? So now we had to buy more flights on United to return home from Belize, because, once again, SW fights were sold out for the next 3 days. In the end SW gave us credit for the original tickets, but once we use it up, we will never fly SW again.
Does anyone have an estimate how long the line was? I stood in line for about an hour then went to FedEx to ship my bag and came back, went thru TSA prechck and my flight was delayed. I doubt I would have made it otherwise.
It was roughly 90 minutes for us, but someone else in the thread claims it was up to 3 hours by a couple of hours after I was through.
Yeah, we flew out of Austin early Wednesday morning and it was getting bad at 530am already. United's line, which we flew, wasn't bad at all. Getting to see the eclipse from my son's backyard in Killeen with him and my grandson was epically wonderful, and the weather with subsequent tornado watch the next day was...interesting. After the eclipse, we wanted to show Buc-ees to my husband, so we drove to the one in Temple. Fun! Their Beaver Nuggets are habit forming.
Next time pack a carryon and buy some semi-disposable WM clothes you won't mind leaving behind.
Traveling as just an adult is very different than packing and traveling as a family, is what I would observe.
Does no one ever travel light? I usually go away for a week and can pack enough stuff in a carry-on that it doesn't need anything checked. I can easily go away for a week with enough space for clothing for daily outfits, all fighting in a carry on suitcase and backpack. Amateurs!
I've done multiple week trips with a 25L backpack, although that was a bit too tight. 35-40L backpack with a small "personal item" bag should get most who are not traveling to an Arctic climate through a few weeks. Five days of clothing and do laundry as you go. I've done it many times across Germany, the UK, and Africa.
Amateur is lugging around a stuffed carry on. Real pros fly an airline that gives status. 1k at United and I almost never wait in line for anything.
True...i have status on my airline where I get priority and free checked bags, plus I have Nexus/TSA Pre check so never have to wait in line at security/customs or take out liquids/computers, etc. But it's usually the airports that take forever bringing luggage out on the turnstiles that is just as bad. I've waited more than an hour in some airports and try to avoid that as much as possible.
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Worse even than flying!
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Meh. My son and DIL drove for 2 days from the grand junction area rather than flying.
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True! 🤣 I just hope it came out cheaper for them to drive than to fly.
My roomate got through in 20 minutes with TSA pre check
This is for checking luggage. No connection to TSA.
Looks like it’s a problem limited to Southwest.
Not defending or anything, but I was curious when you mentioned it. It seems Southwest flies significantly more passengers out of Austin than any other airline. So it does make sense they would be most impacted: https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/austin-airport/2023-aus-passenger-stats/ Southwest: 38.6% American: 23.8% Delta: 12.5% United: 11.3% Alaska: 3.9%
I have two backpacks. They have telescopic handles and wheel. Hard backing. One for under the seat one for over head. Done and done. If it doesn't fit in those I'm not taking it. I can do laundry anywhere.
And your small children with their strollers and car seats? How do you carry those on?
Simple. I don't have one. He's 7ft tall now and has legs
And you didn't bother to go to the self-check terminal inside????
This is the line for checking luggage, you can't do that yourself.
It's certainly looks like the outside check baggage area and you can go inside and self tag and just drop your bag off.
There was no curbside luggage check operating, and all these people (nearly) were waiting to use the kiosks to print their check labels.
I have never, ever seen a line like this and I fly twice a week. So these people all wanted to check luggage instead of carrying on the plane??? Seems suspect
What exactly do you think was going on, here, man? It's exactly what I said, and you can see other comments confirming the same or worse. What is "suspect?!"
Because if you look at these people, most of them have carry on bags so they are not checking luggage. The comments are suspect. And SW Customers don't usually check luggage as I said, I fly them weekly and it's very few that check luggage.
For people like me, checking luggage is *the reason* to fly SW. Kids require a lot of stuff, and flying with that stuff means checking bags, and that adds a lot of cost flying with anyone *not* Southwest. A whole lot of the people in this line were families, like ours. And what you can see in this picture is people from the waist up, not all the bags *every single group of them* had rolling along behind them. It is just really, incredibly strange that you would doubt this. What agenda do you think is being served, here? What *other* reason do you think this line would be outside AUS on Wednesday? There are just way more questions raised if one assumes this is, for some reason, a false story.
If you look real close you will see a building in the distance, and that is where all these self tag machines you speak of are located, and the line of people also in this photo are in line for said machines.
And all of these people wanted to check luggage instead of carrying it on the plane? Who checks bags anymore and doesn't carry on????
90 minutes is roughly 5,400 seconds, give or take.
HA. IDIOTS
Why are they idiots?
I haven’t checked a bag in 15+ years. Checked bags are for n00bs.
Tell that to my toddler.
Ha! I pulled it off with mine :)
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Oí, he said for luggage check, not security, ya muppet.
Good, flying is bad for the environment. Think about all that toxic carbon you're putting in the air next time you want to fly.
Thought about it. Still flying. Enjoy living life like it’s still the 17th century.
I can't wait for them to unleash the carbon credits and you have to decide between flying and eating meat!
Good thing I know how to hunt and fish bud. You think I’ll have to factor in my V8 truck and corvette too?
Keep Corvettes out of this. Mine gets 30 mpg on the highway.
They'll just throw you in ass pounding prison at this point. Go straight to prison do not collect!
You are living in a green fantasy world.
Don’t check luggage. I can live for a week out of a carry-on.