Traffic backups at SEA Airport longer than TSA lines Monday
Dec 1, 2025, 6:14 PM | Updated: Dec 2, 2025, 7:27 am
Travelers wait in line at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. (Photo courtesy of KIRO 7)
(Photo courtesy of KIRO 7)
Many holiday travelers heading to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Monday morning faced delays before they even reached the terminal.
Traffic leading into Sea-Tac backed up more than a mile, according to traffic maps and data, and travelers driving to the airport. Airport officials have warned that there is often more congestion at the airport in the Arrivals and Departure zones during the holidays than inside the terminal itself. That appeared to be true during the Thanksgiving holiday.
“Everybody wants to meet Grandma and Grandpa or relatives at the terminal and pick them up in particular,” explained airport spokesperson Perry Cooper.
One option KIRO Newsradio’s Chris Sullivan offered was dropping passengers on International Boulevard, where they can walk roughly a tenth of a mile to the terminal.
Inside the airport, TSA lines continued to grow throughout the morning. At the same time, flight delays rippled across the country. Winter storms in the Midwest caused more than 700 nationwide delays at one point in the morning. Sea-Tac saw up to 20 delayed flights, according to Flight Aware, but flyers connecting through Chicago, Minneapolis, or Detroit faced significantly worse disruptions.
Monday’s issues come on the heels of a messy weather weekend for air travel. KIRO 7 spoke with families stranded overnight at Sea-Tac after storms snarled flight schedules nationwide.
“We had a layover here, and it was canceled, so we stayed the night,” a couple traveling from Thailand told KIRO 7 TV. “We’re pretty sleep-deprived and jet-lagged, so it will probably be nice to go to sleep.”
More rush periods are expected this week between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m., and again from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Monday wasn’t the busiest travel day of the season, but with long backups and growing security lines, airport officials recommend travelers arrive as early as possible. Sea-Tac airport officials expected 180,000 people to travel through the airport on Monday alone.
However, with getting home after the holidays, the goal for so many, as one traveler told KIRO 7 TV, “Taking the plane is the way to go. Even if the traffic is bad, it’s still better than a 13-hour drive.”
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