Guest Column: Tim Leitch

Tenacity, TSA and the travelers at Terminal 8

I left the North Fork in the middle of the night, heading to JFK for a 9 a.m. flight to London. I arrived at Terminal 8 at 3:30 in the morning, convinced I was early.

Just inside the entrance, a man was asleep on a blowup mattress, wearing eye shades and earplugs. A terminal survivalist. Clearly a veteran. I realized immediately that I was not.

My flight on British Airways wouldn’t begin check-in until 5:30, but the terminal was already alive — and not in a reassuring way. Lines stretched through the building and disappeared into the security area. A man nearby told me he had missed his flight the night before after underestimating how long it would take to get through the TSA line. That detail stayed with me.

I was traveling to London to meet my first grandchild, just born to my daughter who lives there. Whatever this morning required, I intended to get on that flight.

As the hours passed, it became clear that something larger than a typical travel delay was unfolding. When the TSA lines finally took shape, they extended outside the terminal, snaking multiple lengths of the building. A separate Pre-Check line ran just as long in the opposite direction.

There were no agents directing traffic. No airport staff managing the flow. No visible authority at all. And yet, somehow, the lines formed.

They curved and folded into themselves, almost organically — like a Fibonacci sequence, if Fibonacci had been studying human behavior under stress.

Here’s what was remarkable: Everyone cooperated. No one cut the line. No one argued. People helped one another, answered questions, held places. Strangers formed small communities with those nearest to them.

At one point, I found myself navigating the line by tracking a tall man ahead of me with a truly impressive head of hair, who became — without his knowledge — my point of reference for progress. When I told him later, he laughed.

Families with young children waited patiently for hours. The kids, in many cases, handled it better than the adults. They sat atop carry-on bags and seemed to accept the experience as part of the journey.
Not everyone adapted so gracefully. One woman near me, headed to Bermuda, spent most of her time on her phone. After about an hour in line, we reached the entrance to the security hall. It was 7:15 a.m.. Her original flight was at 7:50. She announced she was leaving to catch a 9 a.m. flight from another terminal instead. It was an ambitious plan. She had already checked a bag. I wished her well, in the way you wish someone well when they have made a series of decisions you cannot begin to defend. It seemed to me she would have been better off staying put and playing out the hand she’d been dealt.

Eventually, we made it inside the security hall. We had spent about an hour and a half outside and expected another hour ahead. Normally, the hall is staffed by something like a hundred TSA agents. That morning, there were perhaps 30. Thirty people doing the work of a hundred, without complaint.
Whatever else could be said about the system, these individuals were carrying it on their backs. They moved quickly and efficiently. As I passed through, I made a point of thanking as many of them as I could. It felt like the right thing to do.

What I didn’t expect was how much it mattered. The smiles, the brief exchanges, the genuine appreciation — they stood out in a morning otherwise defined by dysfunction.
In the end, I made it to the gate with very little time to spare. There, I was reunited with the group of strangers I had spent hours alongside. All accounted for.

One of them mentioned they had been waving me over earlier to join them in what they believed was a better position in the line. I hadn’t seen them. Of course I hadn’t.

We boarded. The flight to Heathrow was uneventful, almost strangely given the morning that preceded it. And then, after nearly 12 hours of shared experience, we said our goodbyes. Just like that, the small community that had formed in the chaos of Terminal 8 dissolved.

What remains is not just the memory of how broken the system felt, but of how well people responded to it.

For a few hours in Terminal 8, there was no management, no direction, and very little support.
And yet, it worked—because people made it work.

Mr. Leitch is a Southold resident.