Most Transportation Security Administration workers received pay on Monday for at least two missed paychecks, a major development after weeks of financial strain and operational chaos tied to the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. The payment helped ease some of the worst airport bottlenecks seen in recent memory, though the broader funding standoff in Washington remains unresolved.

The breakthrough came after President Donald Trump signed an emergency directive on Friday, allowing TSA officers to be paid, even as Congress remained deadlocked over DHS funding. Reuters reported that roughly 50,000 TSA officers had gone unpaid since mid-February during the 45-day partial shutdown. By Monday, most had received retroactive pay covering at least two full missed pay periods, according to TSA.

The lack of pay had begun to affect airport operations nationwide seriously. In recent days, TSA absenteeism surged, with Reuters reporting that 12.4% of TSA workers failed to show up last Friday. Some airports were hit especially hard, including New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, where more than one-third of officers were absent, and Houston-area airports, where absentee rates reached 45%. Those shortages contributed to security lines stretching for more than 4 hours at several major hubs during the busy spring break travel period.

By Monday, those lines had started to shrink. The Associated Press reported that airport bottlenecks eased considerably once TSA officers began receiving pay again, with some checkpoints that had previously seen hours-long waits dropping back to far shorter delays. Even so, the AP noted that the recovery was not seamless. Some employees reported discrepancies in their back pay, including issues involving overtime and tax withholding, suggesting the crisis may not be fully behind the agency’s workforce.

AP reported last week that more than 450 TSA officers had quit since the shutdown began, while Reuters said severe financial hardships were building for workers asked to continue screening travelers without pay. AFGE, the union representing many federal workers, warned on March 23 that about 90% of Homeland Security’s 260,000 employees were working without pay during the shutdown, including personnel at TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Reuters noted that while TSA workers received emergency compensation, tens of thousands of other DHS employees remained unpaid as the political impasse continued. The standoff has centered on disagreements over immigration enforcement policy, with Democrats demanding changes and Republicans rejecting a bipartisan Senate proposal in favor of a measure to fund all of DHS without those restrictions.

The administration had taken increasingly unusual steps to keep airport screening functioning. ICE and Homeland Security Investigations personnel were deployed to assist at some airports as TSA staffing levels deteriorated.