Allow extra time. Here’s a look at the security lines right now at #DIA. #9newsmornings pic.twitter.com/qBpK8UO6r1

— 9NEWS Denver (@9NEWS) December 29, 2015

Getting through government checkpoints at DIA has been a nightmare this holiday season, causing backups reminiscent of I-25.

The airport blames the TSA, because that federal agency is in charge of those security checkpoints.

However, the Denver Post reports that the TSA is blaming the airlines, holiday travelers, the weather, and Santa – everyone except themselves for not having enough staff on duty to conduct security checks that seems the likely culprit in the three-hour backups experienced in recent days.

TSA blamed weather in the Midwest for causing the aircraft delays, trip cancellations and rescheduled flights that prompted the checkpoint backups.

Bad weather and cancelled flights seems to happen every Christmas season, so TSA should have been prepared when extra flights were added to make up for it. That’s only common sense.

But the TSA whines that the airlines never told them about this phenomenon so they could not make adjustments, which one can only presume means they would have added extra staffing.

Some travelers waited up to three hours to be screened late Monday and into Tuesday morning, but the Transportation Security Administration maintained it had no staffing issues at the airport.

Aha, so the problem was not enough staffing, the problem was that nobody told TSA about the extra passengers that caused three-hour backups with their regularly scheduled staffing.

Now that the TSA knows about it, what are they going to do?

Nothing, apparently.

Passengers are now being advised that they need to get to the airport three hours early to get through those fully staffed checkpoints.