Step into the TSA PreCheck lane at Los Angeles International this week and the person ahead of you might not be flying anywhere.
Since early this month, the Transportation Security Administration has allowed vetted travelers without tickets to clear the checkpoint and walk to a gate to meet an arriving grandmother or see off a college kid.
The program is called Gateside by TSA PreCheck. It costs nothing and is currently running at 13 airports. And the agency’s pitch for it is sentiment, not security.
Gateside, it says, brings back “the moments that once defined air travel.”
Those moments ended on a Tuesday morning 25 years ago. Gate passes were among the first things to get jettisoned. Now they’re back, the shoe rule is gone, the liquids limit is under review, and the job of screening you may soon belong to a private contractor. Each piece has a reasonable-sounding explanation.
But put them on a timeline and things look a little different.
What the TSA has handed back
The restrictions on shoes went first. On July 8, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security ended the removal requirement that had been in place nationwide since 2006, a rule born from Richard Reid’s attempt to light a bomb in his sneaker on a Paris-to-Miami flight in December 2001.
The liquids rule is next in line. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in July 2025 that the 3-1-1 limit was under review, and TSA officials told reporters around the September 11 anniversary this year that airports with CT scanners may eventually let you carry a full water bottle through. No formal change has been announced.
Screening itself went on the block. In 2026, the agency rolled out Gold+, a model in which private contractors would run both the screening workforce and the checkpoint technology while it supervised these activities. Des Moines, Charleston and Tampa signed up.
In late August, after roughly three months, the agency scrapped Gold+ but didn’t give up on the idea. David Cummins, the new administrator and a former senior vice president at the British contractor Serco Group, is replacing it with an expanded version of the older Screening Partnership Program under a plan called Horizon 25. Private screeners are already in use by 20 airports. About 47,000 federal screeners are watching to see what happens to their jobs.
All of this is happening while the agency has less capacity than it used to. The Homeland Security shutdown earlier this year had screeners working without pay and produced hours-long lines at some airports in March.
Its own record isn’t reassuring either. A 2019 GAO audit found that of nine vulnerabilities identified through covert testing since 2015, none had been formally resolved as of September 2018. In 2024, TSA screeners intercepted 6,678 firearms at checkpoints, and 94 percent of them were loaded. Those guns were stopped by a person watching a screen.
And now you can walk to the gate
The agency’s argument for introducing Gateside is that it’s safe. Computed tomography scanners produce a three-dimensional image a screener can rotate, which the agency says makes shoe removal and the small-bottle rule unnecessary at equipped checkpoints. PreCheck members submit fingerprints and sit for annual background checks, so extending the lane to a vetted person without a ticket adds no unvetted body to the secure side.
Real ID enforcement closed the identity loophole. Cockpit doors are hardened. And the layered-defense argument carries real weight: RAND researcher Kelly Klima notes there hasn’t been a successful attack on a screened U.S. commercial flight since 2001, and credits the agency for it. Her colleague John Hollywood makes the case for layers working together, while cautioning that the goal is to “stay vigilant but not overreactive.”
But have we gone too far?
The poll
If you answered yes:
- Which change worries you most: shoes, liquids, gate passes or private screeners?
- Would you accept longer lines in exchange for the old rules?
- Have you seen something at a checkpoint that made you doubt the screening?
If you answered no:
- Do you think the scanners are good enough to replace the rules, or do you think the old rules never did much?
- Would you use a Gateside pass to meet someone at the gate?
- Does it concern you that a contractor may screen you next year?
My take
The TSA is shedding procedures faster than it’s installing new equipment.
Peter DiDomenica, the former Massachusetts State Police sergeant who helped write the original shoe rule at Logan, didn’t ask for it to stay forever. He asked for it to stay random, X-raying shoes maybe 1 percent of the time, because a deterrent works on what someone planning an attack believes is possible. The agency deleted the entire rule instead.
I’d feel better about all of it if someone would publish the threat assessment. Ask the agency why shoes came off the list and you get a line about technology. Ask which airports have the scanners that justify it and the answer gets vague. Ask what happens to accountability when a contractor misses something and there’s no answer at all.
I’m not suggesting we should go back to the days of humiliating pat-downs and unpacking toiletry kits in a bin. But it would be reassuring to know who decided the risk changed. What did they look at? What did they find? I don’t need another press release about bringing back the Golden Age of Travel. I just wonder if we’ve forgotten the lessons of 9/11.
Your turn
If you remember what it was like to fly before 9/11, you’ve probably noticed the recent changes at the screening area. What do you think? Are the scanners good enough, or are we trading safety for a shorter line and a nicer goodbye at the gate? And if you’ve used a Gateside pass already, I want to hear how it went.
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