Haven't even gotten there yet, but planning ahead.  Have there been any significant delays going thru security at the airport lately?  Should I anticipate more than a half hour?  Flying SWA, btw.  And naturally, this will be Sunday late afternoon, which is probably a no-brainer that it'll be relatively busy, eh?

Thanks for any feedback.

I've had to do some air travel lately (all on SWA out of McCarren) and have found the security check to be relatively smooth.  Of course, this was before the panty bomber episode.  The SWA terminal is always the busiest at McCarren, and being that you will be traveling on the Sunday afternoon at the end of CES/AEE I would suggest allowing an hour (rather than just a half hour), just to be on the safe side.

The main C gate security check (around the corner from the Mr. Boxer store) can get super long for the mass of people trying to get back home before Monday.

There's a smaller security check area at the end of the Southwest check-in desk that takes you to the higher numbered C gates (C25? C30?) although it's a lot more walking if you're flying out of C1-C11.

Southwest uses a handful of B gates so you could use the A/B security check in area as well (there's a walkway between the B and C gates past the security checkpoints).

As for CES, seems like attendees aren't staying the entire 4 days (maybe getting a room for just a night or two) and with travel budgets being tight, they might have left on Friday night or Saturday.  The security checkpoints have more lanes these days vs years past when the mass of people trying to get out of Vegas at the end of CES took 3-4 hours in the security line.

You're also taking Southwest and dealing with people that probably don't fly a lot.  People that don't know the TSA rules and aren't prepared.  Leaving on Sunday to get back home for work on Monday morning.

Give yourself a couple hours, maybe even more time to play it safe.  The airport has free wifi (not sure if the block sites like TER) so you can do some online stuff while you're killing time.

Have fun,
 Bob

Appreciate the input.  Officially, nothing has changed procedurally since that Christmas Day incident.  I happen to know our airport director here and was actually in his office the week after Christmas.  

I generally arrive at the airport at least an hour before the flight.  But it's never taken me more than 15 minutes to get thru Security.  Granted, I believe we have more "detectors" than most airports, but they don't always have them all open.

Rather be safe than sorry, so I'll likely plan on 2 hours prior to the flight.

Knowing the way that you drive, think it might be faster for you to drive over from Albq.?  I will be thru there in a couple of weeks, so meet you at the regular place??

Keep me posted on your schedule. I'm not in town weekdays.

It's a breeze over at the executive air terminal