Airports / South Carolina / CHS
Charleston (CHS) TSA wait times
Charleston International Airport schedules 70 departures on an average day, and pushes up to 6 of them in a single hour. The checkpoint feels that: expect roughly 10 to 20 minutes in the standard lanes at the Sunday 5 pm peak, and closer to 5 minutes at Wednesday 7 pm.
Security now Modelled
11min
Up 1 min since 9 am.
Standard line. It usually runs 10 to 15 minutes at this hour on a Monday.
The worst it gets at CHS is about 13 min, Sunday at 5 pm. The quietest useful hour is Wednesday at 7 pm, about 5 min.
Tell us your flight below and we will work out when to leave.
A typical Monday.
That 11 is the standard line
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Standard 11minthe default
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PreCheck 4minsaves 7
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CLEAR 3minsaves 8
When should you leave?
Worked from the wait actually running at this checkpoint at the hour you will be here, not a fixed buffer.
Example. For a 6:00 PM domestic flight today, leave home about 4:52 PM. That is 30 min driving, 6 min to park, about 12 min at security when you reach it around 5:28 PM, 5 min to walk to the gate and 15 min spare before boarding: 68 minutes door to gate. Change any of it below for your own flight.
Enter your flight details above to work out your exact departure time.
Leave home by
Trip timeline
Kept on this device, so it is waiting for you next time.
Which security line?
The three ways through the checkpoint at this airport, what each is running right now, and what the faster ones save you.
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Standard 11min
Open to everyone. Usually 10 to 15.
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PreCheck 4min
Saves 7 min. TSA pre-approved travellers. Usually 5 to 10.
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CLEAR 3min
Saves 8 min. Biometric check, then to the front. Usually 0 to 5.
PreCheck and CLEAR are separate programmes. PreCheck is a lighter screening you qualify for; CLEAR verifies who you are and walks you to the front of whichever line you are already entitled to use.
Another airport nearby?
Airports within driving distance of CHS, and the worst each one gets in its own busiest hour.
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Hilton Head (HHH) 9min peak
30 miles away. 8 flights a day.
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Myrtle Beach (MYR) 13min peak
42 miles away. 40 flights a day.
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Savannah (SAV) 13min peak
43 miles away. 54 flights a day.
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Columbia (CAE) 9min peak
48 miles away. 15 flights a day.
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Augusta (AGS) 9min peak
58 miles away. 5 flights a day.
Airlines at CHS
Which airline you are flying decides your terminal and checkpoint. This is the share of CHS's departures each one runs, from the published schedule.
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American 21%
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Delta 20%
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Southwest 16%
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Republic Airways regional 11%
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United 10%
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PSA Airlines regional 10%
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JetBlue 7%
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Envoy Air regional 4%
Regional carriers (SkyWest, Envoy, PSA, Republic) fly these routes under the mainline brands, so a SkyWest flight shows on your ticket as Delta, United, American or Alaska.
For the terminal your gate is in, check your airline's boarding pass or the airport's official map. We do not model terminal-by-terminal waits yet, and we will not guess at them.
Is another time better?
The checkpoint is busiest around 5 am today, at about 13 min. Fill in your flight above to see where your own trip lands.
The dark bar is now.
Busiest hours at CHS
Every block is one hour of one weekday at CHS, shaded by how much of the airport's own peak load the checkpoint is carrying. This is the measured half of the page: it comes from the published flight schedule, not from an estimate.
| Day | 12a | 1a | 2a | 3a | 4a | 5a | 6a | 7a | 8a | 9a | 10a | 11a | 12p | 1p | 2p | 3p | 4p | 5p | 6p | 7p | 8p | 9p | 10p | 11p |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Tue | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Sat |
Darker means a heavier checkpoint load. Built from 6,561 scheduled departures from CHS across three months of federal on-time records.
Hour by hour, Monday
| Hour | Departures | Standard | PreCheck |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 am | 2 | 5–10 min | 3 min |
| 4 am | 5 | 5–15 min | 3 min |
| 5 am | 6 | 10–20 min | 4 min |
| 6 am | 4 | 5–15 min | 3 min |
| 7 am | 3 | 5–10 min | 3 min |
| 8 am | 3 | 5–15 min | 3 min |
| 9 am | 5 | 5–15 min | 4 min |
| 10 am | 5 | 10–15 min | 4 min |
| 11 am | 4 | 5–15 min | 3 min |
| noon | 4 | 5–15 min | 3 min |
| 1 pm | 5 | 10–15 min | 4 min |
| 2 pm | 5 | 10–15 min | 4 min |
| 3 pm | 5 | 10–15 min | 4 min |
| 4 pm | 5 | 5–15 min | 4 min |
| 5 pm | 5 | 10–20 min | 4 min |
| 6 pm | 4 | 5–15 min | 3 min |
| 7 pm | 2 | 5–10 min | 3 min |
| 8 pm | 1 | 5–10 min | 3 min |
Questions people ask about CHS
How early should I get to CHS?
For a domestic flight out of Charleston, plan to be inside the terminal about an hour before departure, and about an hour for an international one. That covers a 10 to 20 minute checkpoint queue at the Sunday peak plus the walk to the gate. Outside the peak you can safely trim it; the calculator above works it out from your actual departure time.
What is the busiest time at CHS security?
Sunday around 5 pm, when 6 departures' worth of passengers are converging on the checkpoint at once. The calmest hour with real traffic is Wednesday at 7 pm, at roughly 5 minutes.
Is TSA PreCheck worth it at CHS?
At the Sunday peak it turns a 10 to 20 minute queue into something closer to 5 minutes. Over a five year membership that is worth it if you fly more than about three round trips a year through an airport this busy. The trusted traveller calculator prices it against your own flying.
When does security open at CHS?
Charleston International Airport does not publish checkpoint opening hours in any national feed, so we will not invent them. What the schedule does show is that the first departures leave around 3 am, and checkpoints generally open about two hours before the first flight of the day.
Flight schedule data: U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance, May 2026, July 2025 and December 2025. Wait minutes are modelled, not measured. Here is exactly how. Page rebuilt 24 August 2026.