TSA Reopens Airport Gates to Ticketless Visitors, 25 Years After 9/11

The Transportation Security Administration has begun letting people without a boarding pass walk past the checkpoint and back to the gate for the first time since the September 11, 2001, attacks, reviving a routine of American air travel that vanished nearly 25 years ago. The new benefit, called Gateside by TSA PreCheck, went live at its first airports on September 8 and continued expanding this week, with Omaha's Eppley Airfield and Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport switching it on Wednesday.

The rollout lands in the same week the country is marking the 25th anniversary of the 2001 attacks, the event that shut ticketless visitors out of airport terminals in the first place.

What the program does

Gateside lets people enrolled in TSA PreCheck, or holders of a Known Traveler Number through an equivalent trusted-traveler program, apply online for a free one-day pass to enter the secure side of a participating airport without flying. TSA describes the eligible uses as walking a family member to the gate, meeting an arriving passenger, joining someone for a meal or shopping trip during a layover, or greeting a service member coming home. Children can be added to a parent's or guardian's application.

Applicants request a pass at TSA.gov/gateside between one and three days before the visit, entering their Known Traveler Number and choosing an airport. Once approved, a visitor shows accepted photo identification at a TSA PreCheck lane, goes through the same screening as a ticketed passenger, and gets a pass valid for one calendar day with unlimited re-entry. The touchless biometric lanes are off-limits to Gateside visitors, and everyone using the program is held to the same conduct rules as passengers.

The program opened with 13 airports: Los Angeles International, Dallas Fort Worth International, Harry Reid International in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City International, San Diego International, Indianapolis International, Mesa Gateway in Arizona, and, added over the past three days, Bill and Hillary Clinton National in Little Rock, Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National, Will Rogers International in Oklahoma City, John Glenn Columbus International, Eppley Airfield in Omaha and Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County. TSA Administrator David P. Cummins, confirmed to the role in August, said the agency intends to carry the program to all of the roughly 430 airports it screens nationwide by the end of the year.

A rule that outlasted its moment

Before 2001, greeting a plane at the gate or seeing off a relative at the jet bridge was ordinary. The hijackings that September prompted a rapid overhaul of airport security, and non-ticketed visitors were barred from the sterile area beyond the checkpoint almost everywhere, a restriction that has held for a quarter-century even as screening technology, watchlists and the PreCheck trusted-traveler system itself matured. A handful of individual airports experimented with narrower workarounds in the years since — Pittsburgh International started a day-pass system in 2017, and Seattle-Tacoma International followed in 2018 with a program capped at 300 visitors a day — but a federal, PreCheck-linked version had not existed until this month, as CBS News reported when the program was announced.

Cummins framed the timing as intentional rather than coincidental, tying the reopening of gate access directly to the anniversary.

"And this is something that they have wanted, and it's something that we haven't had for 25 years, since TSA was stood up, since those horrible 9/11 terrorist attacks 25 years ago this week."

He also pointed to a practical use case the agency has emphasized in briefings: adult children walking elderly parents through security and to the gate. "You can accompany them through the gate, make sure they can get through our baggage and body scans fine," Cummins said.

Who it reaches, and who is skeptical

The immediate beneficiaries are the roughly 20 million holders of TSA PreCheck membership, plus travelers in other Department of Homeland Security trusted-traveler programs such as Global Entry, who already carry a Known Traveler Number. Anyone without PreCheck status, including the large share of leisure travelers who fly only occasionally, cannot use Gateside as designed, which limits the program's reach for now even as TSA promises broader airport coverage.

Airports that had already tested their own gate-access programs offered a preview of the tradeoffs. Philadelphia International's existing day-pass system draws roughly 600 users a month, according to the airport, used mostly by people connecting with friends during layovers and by aviation enthusiasts rather than families. Some travelers reacted to the federal rollout with concern about congestion at checkpoints and terminal gates that are already crowded during peak hours, and about the logistics of an airport "drop-off" turning into a longer visit. TSA has said it built daily visitor caps into each participating airport's rollout and will monitor checkpoint wait times as it adds locations, expanding gradually rather than opening every airport simultaneously.

What happens next

TSA has not published a fixed sequence for which airports join next, saying only that it is moving in phases toward nationwide coverage of its 430 airports by the close of 2026. Each new airport has so far been announced with its own press release timed to its local launch, a pattern that continued Wednesday with Omaha and Detroit. Whether the pace holds through the busier holiday travel season, when checkpoint lines already run long, is likely to be the first real test of the daily caps the agency has built into the program.