May 16--When Sean Hoffman arrived at Midway Airport last week for his flight home to Oregon, he said he was taken aback by the comically long line to get through security.
"I got to the end, (and) I was like, holy (expletive), people would probably like to see this," Hoffman recalled in an interview.
So he went back to the beginning, near the spot where travelers shuffle up to Transportation Security Administration agents checking IDs, and followed the line while shooting video.
The resulting clip, titled "TSA, are you (expletive) kidding me?" had been viewed more than 2 million times as of Sunday morning.
"OK, here's the start, let's see how long this thing is," Hoffman says in the video, before tracing the security queue nearly all the way to the CTA Orange Line station.
Hoffman, 34, lives in Eugene, Ore., and works as a photographer, he said. He'd been in the Midwest "shooting some events," but declined to say more since he used profanity in his video and doesn't want it to reflect poorly on his employer.
Hoffman said he arrived at Midway around 5 p.m. and barely made his 7:50 p.m. flight home.
At the airport, travelers in line were anxious and upset, he said. There was "a lot of frustration" and talk about the TSA's inefficiencies, Hoffman said.
"People were missing their flights," he said. "I could see some panicked people who had to be somewhere."
He said the line struck him as odd because "at any other job, you get rushed, and it's all hands on deck ... and you never see that with the TSA.
"I just kind of felt the TSA's getting more and more (awful) over the years, so it was just a breaking point," Hoffman said.
Hoffman said he shot the video and uploaded it before the flight took off. It "went viral" before he even got off the plane.
"It must have just struck a nerve," he said.
Earlier this year, the Tribune reported that lower staffing by the TSA and a reduction in the number of passengers moved into expedited screening lanes has meant longer lines at airports.
A spokesperson for American Airlines, Leslie Scott, told the Tribune that 1,000 American Airlines passengers had missed their lines at O'Hare in March due to "excessive" TSA lines.
"TSA is our No. 1 problem right now, and it's only going to get worse," Scott previously said.
TSA officials did not return a message seeking comment Saturday. A city spokeswoman declined to comment on the Midway video, saying it's "a TSA issue."
Chicago Tribune's Mary Wisniewski contributed.
gpratt@tribpub.com
