If you’ve ever flown, then you know this scenario: Your flight leaves at the crack of dawn. If you leave home with several hours to spare, you’ll blow through an empty security line – but then what? Will the flight be delayed, leaving you with a two hour wait? In that case you’d rather not leave home so early.
With the Transportation Security Administration’s new app, My TSA, you no longer have to worry.
The app provides crowdsourced information on wait times at individual checkpoints throughout a given airport and general delay and flight conditions for airports all over the U.S.. It has an exhaustive list of airports throughout the country, from New York’s LaGuardia to New Haven’s Tweed airport, although crowdsourcing means the information can be a bit old at times, or unavailable, at times.
In addition to wait-time information, the app provides a comprehensive list of what you can and cannot bring with you on the plane, as well as a general travel guide to answer questions about acceptable identification or other guidelines.
While the app seems like its main shiny feature is wait-times, we wonder if crowdsourcing the content is the best way to go. Of course, it is the cheapest, but is there no other way to get this information?
The app is one of 18 government-created apps that are being featured as of last week in the new government app store on USA.gov. The wait times are also available for other platforms as a mobile website at www.tsa.gov/mobile.
