TSA launches 'Gateside' program allowing PreCheck members airport gate access without tickets

For nearly a quarter-century, the airport gate has been a boundary that separated the traveler from everyone else. Friends and family members could walk a loved one to the security checkpoint, but that was where the goodbye happened. The hug, the wave, the final moment—it all took place on the public side of the metal detectors, in the terminal with the gift shops and the restaurants that anyone could access.

That boundary is beginning to shift. The Transportation Security Administration has launched a program called Gateside by TSA PreCheck at 13 airports across the country, allowing certain trusted travelers to pass through security without a plane ticket and spend time in the gate areas themselves. It is, in effect, a partial return to how airports functioned before September 11, 2001, when security restrictions were far looser and people without tickets could accompany passengers all the way to the gate.

The program is free but requires advance planning. Eligible travelers—those with TSA PreCheck membership or other trusted-traveler credentials—must apply online between one and three days before they want to visit. Once approved, they can enter through a TSA PreCheck security lane with a valid form of identification. The pass is good for one calendar day and allows re-entry during that period. The TSA framed the initiative as a way to restore something that air travel had lost: the ability to linger with someone before they board, to meet a friend during a layover, to browse the shops and restaurants beyond the checkpoint without being a passenger yourself.

The initial rollout includes Los Angeles International, Dallas-Fort Worth International, Harry Reid International in Las Vegas, and Salt Lake City International, among nine other airports. The TSA has signaled that more airports will be added in the coming months. The agency is not the first to experiment with this idea. Pittsburgh International Airport launched its own gate-access program, called myPITpass, in 2017, though it was suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic and remained paused during airport construction. Seattle-Tacoma International started a similar program a year after Pittsburgh, allowing up to 300 people without tickets to enter the gates each day. Philadelphia International and Kansas City International have their own versions as well.

What makes the TSA's version significant is its scale and its alignment with the federal trusted-traveler infrastructure that already exists. By tying Gateside to PreCheck membership and other known-traveler programs, the agency is leveraging security vetting that has already been done. The person entering the gate area has already been background-checked, fingerprinted, and approved as a low-risk traveler. In the TSA's framing, this makes the security risk manageable—the gate areas remain secure because the people entering them have been vetted in advance.

The program represents a deliberate choice to loosen restrictions that have been in place for more than two decades. It acknowledges that the post-9/11 security model, while necessary, may have been more restrictive than current threat assessments require. It also recognizes something less quantifiable: that airports have become less human spaces as a result, that the rituals of travel—the long goodbye, the excited greeting—have been compressed into the few minutes before a security line. Whether the program gains traction will depend partly on how many people know about it, how easy the application process proves to be, and whether other airports adopt it. But the basic fact is already established: the gate is no longer exclusively for passengers.