The TSA Gateside program is now letting people without plane tickets go through security and walk all the way to the gate at 13 airports around the country. For anyone who has only flown in the last two decades, that is a brand new experience. Before September 11, 2001, walking your mother to her seat area or standing at the gate holding a sign when your cousin landed was just how airports worked. After the attacks, the federal government restricted everything past the checkpoint to ticketed passengers and airport workers, and the goodbye moved to the curb.
TSA is calling the pilot Gateside by TSA PreCheck, and the name tells you the catch right up front. This is not open to everybody. To apply, you have to already be enrolled in TSA PreCheck or hold what the government calls a Known Traveler Number, which is the identification number you get once you have been background checked and approved for expedited screening. PreCheck currently runs about $78 for five years. So the TSA Gateside program is free in the sense that there is no extra charge on top of what you already paid, and not free at all if you are starting from zero.
Getting a pass works through Login.gov, the federal government’s single sign on system. You apply one to three days before the day you plan to visit, and once your pass is issued you show up, present your ID at the PreCheck lane, and go through the same screening as everyone else. That part has not changed. Nobody is skipping the metal detector or the bag scanner. What changed is who is allowed to get in line in the first place. Once you are through, you can meet an arriving flight, walk someone to their gate, sit down and eat, or shop.
The 13 airports in the pilot are Mesa Gateway in Arizona, John Glenn Columbus International in Ohio, Dallas Fort Worth in Texas, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County in Michigan, Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National in Kansas, Indianapolis International in Indiana, Harry Reid International in Las Vegas, Los Angeles International, Bill and Hillary Clinton National in Little Rock, Will Rogers International in Oklahoma City, Eppley Airfield in Omaha, San Diego International, and Salt Lake City International.
Read that list again and notice who is missing. Atlanta is not on it. Neither is New York, Chicago, Miami, Houston, Philadelphia, Washington, Charlotte, or Newark. The busiest airports in the country and the ones serving the largest Black populations in the country are sitting this round out. TSA says more airports are coming in a phased rollout but has not said which ones or when.
If your airport is not on that list, you may still have options, because a lot of airports built their own version of this years ago and never got national attention for it. Those local programs are usually called guest passes or visitor passes, and most of them do not require PreCheck at all. Anyone can apply online, get vetted, and receive a pass. Philadelphia has the Wingmate Pass with up to 100 issued a day. Nashville has the BNA Passport, capped at 75. Seattle allows up to 300 visitors daily. New Orleans, Kansas City, Cleveland, Tampa, San Antonio, Tulsa, Oakland, San Francisco, Albuquerque, Orlando, and Akron Canton all run their own. Detroit and San Diego actually have both, their own local pass and the new federal one.
There is one wrinkle to watch. At airports with their own guest pass program, those pass holders are barred from using the PreCheck lanes and have to go through standard screening. The federal pass gets you the PreCheck lane. The local pass does not.
All of this is landing at a strange moment for the agency. TSA has spent the past year and a half under real pressure. In March 2025, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem moved to end collective bargaining rights for roughly 50,000 TSA officers, a decision that is being fought in federal court. Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama introduced the Abolish the TSA Act, which would hand airport screening over to private contractors and move oversight to the FAA. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint, written for a second Trump term, recommended privatizing TSA outright and deunionizing the workforce immediately in the meantime. This spring’s partial Homeland Security shutdown left screeners unpaid for more than 40 days and pushed wait times past 55 minutes at some checkpoints.
None of those things is the same as Gateside, and TSA has not connected them. Gateside does not change who screens you, who employs them, or what they are paid. What it does do is add more bodies to the PreCheck line and give people one more reason to sign up for a paid membership at a moment when the agency’s core screening operation is being publicly questioned. Whether that is coincidence or positioning is not something TSA has addressed.
