IAD Security time - Is Dulles website accurate
 

I have been looking at the wait times on the Dulles web site:

http://www.flydulles.com/iad/security-information

I shows security wait times like 5 minutes for the East Checkpoint and 1 minute for the West Checkpoint. At 4:00 PM on a weekday.

Is this site accurate?

I rarely use IAD but from personal experience at other major US airports, security wait times are never that short on a weekday afternoon at 4:00 PM

I have not compared my actual wait times to the advertised wait times but I have been through the checkpoints at IAD 3 times in the last few weeks from o'dark thirty to late morning and mid-afternoon on weekdays. Each time the wait has been about 10 minutes or less so they may well be accurate.

I've never waited more than 15 minutes in IAD security and quite a few times have been trough in less than 5 minutes. That's mostly between 4 pm and 7 pm.

Simple answer is "yes" - the estimated wait times are quite accurate. The same information is posted on signs at the security checkpoint entrances on the departure (ticketing) level. For some reasons they don't have signs with that information at the checkpoint entrances on the arrivals level.

Thanks to all for your input.

Accurate? Pretty much so. But then there's the Garden State Parkway effect. You know, when you're zipping along and all of a sudden, there's a bunching of traffic - a short, jarring delay - but for no apparent reason. And then, just as mysteriously, things open up again.

So it's accurate when it tells you that the lines are long or not so long. And it's pretty much accurate when you are in the terminal, looking at your smartphone, and deciding that minute which line to choose. But I wouldn't count on it to be all that accurate in advance, unless it's warning you that lines are very long.