HOUSTON — Travelers across the country are feeling the brunt of the government shutdown in the form of exceptionally long TSA lines, and Houston is among the hardest hit, with waits stretching to four hours or more at Bush Airport Monday. Those long lines didn’t just frustrate passengers. They also slowed the federal investigation into a deadly overnight crash between an Air Canada jet and an emergency vehicle at New York’s LaGuardia Airport.
During a news conference on Monday, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy was speaking to the media about the investigation and how the agency had trouble getting its team together. That included one person who was stuck in a security line in Houston.
“We have one our … air traffic control specialist who was in line with TSA for three hours until we called in Houston to beg to see if we can get her through so we can get her here,” Homendy said. “So it’s been a really, a really big challenge to get the entire team here and they’re still arriving as I speak right up until about, I think the latest I saw was midnight, maybe 1 a.m. tomorrow morning.”…