Travel influx creates chaos at Myrtle Beach airport. Don’t expect it to get better soon
Gone are the days of showing up to Myrtle Beach International Airport just 45 minutes early and easily being able to make your flight.
The airport, long seen as easy to sail through, is now defined by TSA lines that run the entire length of the terminal — yes, the entire length — that take an hour or more to get through at peak times. At its worst, the airport saw a 71 minute wait to get through security on July 3, according to TSA. The TSA lines are probably the most visible symptom of the airport’s rapid, almost uncontrolled, growth in recent months.
But, the chaos doesn’t stop there.
Throughout the airport now are warning signs, if you are flying out anytime from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, arrive three hours early. Failing to heed those warnings could result in missing flights, tourism officials say.
From the moment departing passengers arrive at the airport during that window, they will likely be met with long lines to check-in and get through security.
Even once passengers get past security, several complained online and to The Sun News that it takes more than half an hour to get food at one the airport’s few eateries.
Looking to grab some Chick-fil-A minutes before getting on your flight? Think again.
For arrivals, the picture isn’t much better. Passengers told The Sun News they had to wait up to 45 minutes to get their bags and as long as four hours to get a rental car, if the right car was even available.
Dennis Buron of Parker, Colorado, booked a minivan six months in advance for his family of seven but was initially told when he arrived that Avis didn’t have any. He got lucky, though. The agent re-checked, and one had just been turned in.
The picture of a busy airport is a striking change from late last year, when a study released in December 2020 from data analysis firm Lending Tree said Myrtle Beach International was the emptiest airport in the nation over the holiday season.
Rapid expansion. Southwest flies in.
How did we get here? The stage was set for these crowds in March when Southwest announced for the first time ever that it would be flying to Myrtle Beach. At the same time, Spirit, United Airlines and Frontier were all adding more flights to and from the Grand Strand. New flights means more passengers, thousands more, all of whom have to check-in; go through security; wait at baggage claim; and pick-up or drop off rental cars.
Southwest arrived May 23. It’s inaugural flight arrived from Baltimore before that same plane turned around and flew to Nashville, a new direct destination for Myrtle Beach . That month, the airport saw nearly 300 new departing flights compared to 2019, a 22% increase. July was even more drastic, with more than 1,000 new scheduled departing flights than 2019, a 67% increase.
Spirit was one of the biggest contributors to the rise in new flights. This summer, the low-cost airline has more than 200 flights out of Myrtle Beach every week, a 40% increase compared to before the pandemic.
“This is an attractive place for people to come and play,” Spirit CEO Ted Christie said at a press conference in June. “We serve leisure customers, who are trying to find interesting, sunny destinations to take their family. Myrtle Beach has all of that and more because they offer it affordably.”
Tourism leaders in Myrtle Beach have hailed the expansion of Myrtle Beach International Airport. They say it has made the Grand Strand more accessible to communities who might not otherwise come here, like Dallas, which now has direct flights to the region on Southwest.
“Success breeds additional success,” said Karen Riordan, Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce CEO. “Since the Southwest announcement, it seems like there’s more interest by the other airlines, and there may even be some new opportunities down the line with some players that we’re not working with right now.”
The new flights have also made the airport more useful for the people who live here, by connecting to destinations that locals might want to visit. To mark it’s 25th anniversary of flying to Myrtle Beach, Spirit announced in June new flights to Miami.
Bringing Southwest, the nation’s largest domestic carrier, tourism officials say, greatly broadens the utility of the airport because it allows locals to reach almost the entire country through connecting flights.
Myrtle Beach Hospitality Association CEO Stephen Greene said this kind of expansion is something tourism officials have been hoping for since the 90s. It stands as a symbol of Myrtle Beach’s growth and popularity as a vacation destination.
“They used to tell me stories, when I first moved here, that after Labor Day, you could roll a bowling ball down Ocean Boulevard and not hit a soul,” Greene said. “It’s not just for tourism. It’s such a blessing for those of us who live here that now have the ease of access to 50, 20 communities, which for the size of our airport and our population is unheard of.”
Southwest, with its notorious “bags fly free” policy, will also help attract more golfers seeking to avoid exorbitant golf bag fees on other airlines, Riordan said.
“We’re expecting all that service is really going to help our golf industry,” Riordan said. “To check a golf bag, it’s like $70 on most of the other airlines. It’s significant.”
Bringing travel back
When it came to planning for this summer, tourism officials say they had no idea how quickly visitors would return to town.
Rather than a slow and steady increase that large cities like New York have seen, Myrtle Beach saw an explosion of vacationers return for the spring break season, starting in March. The crowds shrank slightly in May, but only temporarily, and for the last two months, the airport has repeatedly broken records for the number of people passing through security.
“We went from experiencing very strong growth … to a complete global pandemic that shut everything down. Now you’re having to basically reset,” Greene said. “I don’t think any of us expected this year — 2021 has been phenomenal in relation to travel to our area.”
On July 3, the day that saw a more than an hour wait time to get through security, 10,296 people passed through security, a 37% increase compared to 2019. The week leading up to it saw an even bigger rise, 46%, thanks to an extra 15,000 people departing from the airport.
The rapid expansion of flights to and from Myrtle Beach isn’t the only issue exacerbating wait times at the airport.
Many people haven’t traveled in a long time and “are getting used to flying again,” said David McMahon, South Carolina’s Federal Security Director for TSA.
In May, TSA saw travelers try to bring items like power tools, unopened bottles of liquor and baseball bats through security.
But McMahon expects that to get better as the summer goes on, “then we should have pretty manageable wait times there at Myrtle Beach. That’s not to say that we won’t see another 54 minute wait time. It truly does depend on what’s coming through the front door.”
McMahon said with Myrtle Beach being a vacation destination, many fliers will try to do anything they can to avoid checking a bag and paying extra fees for their flight. This results in slowdowns as people move through security lines because more bags have to be X-rayed and searched, sometimes resulting in a higher number of items than usual being confiscated because they can’t be taken on a plane.
Christie, the Spirit CEO, noted that there are longer lines at airports all over the country right now, especially for vacation destinations.
“There are definitely going to be lines,” he said. “We always encourage people to come a little bit earlier than they would before. But we’ve got a lot of friendly people here making sure they get checked through quickly.”
Will the lines calm down?
Every tourism and airport official The Sun News spoke to for this story said they do not believe the current wait times at the airport will become a permanent part of flying to and from Myrtle Beach.
Rather, Greene, Riordan and McMahon all believe that the airport has been hit by a “perfect storm”: rapidly increased volume of available flights, peak summer season travel and pent-up demand from the pandemic.
“It’s a really solid option for a lot of people that probably were thinking about coming to Myrtle Beach, but may have driven in other years,” Riordan said. “This is still a ‘small city’ airport … but it’s growing and it’s becoming, obviously, more popular.”
That perfect storm won’t last forever, Greene, Riordan and McMahon said.
McMahon said in the week after July 3, TSA was able to run an optimization program for its baggage check system that allowed them to cut down the longest wait time to 38 minutes from July 3’s astronomical high of 71 minutes.
The summer travel season also ends in just over a month, which will ease some of the backups.
Summer ending, however, doesn’t solve the problem completely, as these backups and lines could just reappear next spring or summer.
For TSA, McMahon said he would like to see more people coming through with TSA Pre-check, which speeds along the process of getting through security and costs just $85 for five years. Right now, just 15% of travelers coming through Myrtle Beach on a given day have that credential.
Another option is to expand the airport. Tourism officials laud the fact that the airport is much bigger than a community of their size usually has access too, but it still might not be enough to meet the demand of travelers in the coming years. Myrtle Beach has quickly expanded from a summer-only destination to a year-around vacation spot, a transition that’s taken place over just a couple decades, much faster than the airport itself has grown.
“While we’re excited about MYR’s past growth and strong recovery, the airport team will be better equipped to determine what future development needs may be and their associated timelines once we fully move out of the pandemic,” Horry County Director of Airports Scott Van Moppes said in a statement.
It’s easy to see how expansion could alleviate some of the stressors placed on the airport right now. It has just one terminal, and just one security checkpoint, creating a bottleneck. That checkpoint also takes up the entire space of the hallway it’s located in, leaving little room to add more lanes beyond the six already in place.
In Fort Myers, Florida, another popular beach destination, Southwest Florida International Airport had 83% more passengers than Myrtle Beach the week of June 28 to July 4, but saw a longest wait time of just 28 minutes, according to TSA data. That’s because that airport has three terminals and three checkpoints. The airport also saw a similar growth in the number of travelers passing through that week compared to 2019, 41% to Myrtle Beach’s 46%, yet was still able to keep its wait times down.
Airport officials, though, say there are no short-term plans to expand. In the works right now is the airport’s master plan, to be released this fall, but even that is a guideline for potential changes, not a concrete plan for what will be done in the coming years. The airport declined to say if or when any expansion might occur.
Van Moppes said in a statement that the airport has received “mostly positive feedback” this year “despite the increase in passenger traffic.”
For now, travelers can expect to have to wait longer than they have in the past, and arrive earlier to make sure they don’t miss their flight. Even if the airport does expand in the coming years, tourism officials say that the need to arrive two or more hours early is likely to be permanent, just like with any other busy airport.
“The guidance from the FAA has always been two hours. That’s normal,” Riordan said. “I think our issue has just been that we’ve been ignoring it.”
Passengers don’t show up 45 minutes before flights “in a bigger city, because you do it at your own peril,” Riordan said.
What do travelers think of all this? Some, like Danielle Matos of Ohio and Katie Herbert of San Diego, said they were thankful for all of the signs posted around the airport recommending arriving extra early during those peak hours. They were both wading their way through the security line on a Saturday morning.
“I thought it was kind of crazy, but I was prepared because when I landed, they said to be here three hours beforehand,” Herbert said. “I was happy they put those signs up … I would’ve been screwed.”
Others weren’t pleased. Karen Watson, visiting from Pennsylvania, said she’s been coming to Myrtle Beach for 23 years and she’s never seen security lines this bad.
If the airport doesn’t make travel easier soon, “It would preclude my flying here, for sure,” Watson said.
This story was originally published July 27, 2021 at 12:30 PM with the headline "Travel influx creates chaos at Myrtle Beach airport. Don’t expect it to get better soon."
