The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has reduced the number of airports participating in a program that allowed non-travelers to access gate areas. The initiative, known as "Gateside by TSA PreCheck," has been restricted to its original 13 locations just weeks after a national expansion was announced.
The program was reintroduced in September 2026 at 13 sites before being expanded to hundreds of additional airports earlier in October. The service allows TSA PreCheck members who do not have a plane ticket to clear security, a practice that had largely been discontinued across the United States following the security changes implemented after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
According to airport officials, the expansion was reversed within days without a public announcement. Administrators at Norfolk International Airport in Virginia stated they only discovered the change after passengers reported that the airport was no longer listed on the TSA’s online booking portal. Denver International Airport, which was briefly part of the expanded list, confirmed in a statement that the TSA recently returned the program to the original 13 participating airports for the time being. The TSA has not provided a public explanation for the service reduction.
A person living near a decommissioned site, such as Norfolk or Denver, would notice that their local airport is no longer available in the pulldown menu on the TSA’s website. This prevents them from applying for a gate pass, a process that requires advance online registration. For households that had planned to use the service for "welcomes and send-offs," the concrete change is the loss of access to the secure side of the terminal unless they are ticketed passengers.
The rollback sets a precedent of rapid policy shifts for the TSA’s new access initiatives. The knock-on effects include confusion for airport administrators who were not notified of the change and must now manage passenger complaints. At present, the TSA has not announced if or when the program will be expanded again. What happens next depends on further updates from the TSA regarding the permanent status of the program at the hundreds of airports currently excluded from the online booking system. Currently, only 13 airports, including those in Little Rock, Detroit, Las Vegas, Columbus, Wichita, and Oklahoma City, remain active.