I saw some news today that genuinely made me happy. The TSA has launched a new program called Gateside by TSA PreCheck that allows eligible people without a plane ticket to pass through security at selected airports.
In other words, you can go to the gate again! You can walk someone you love all the way to their flight. You can sit with them while they wait to board. Or you can be standing there when they step off the plane. I really miss that.
Before 9/11, going to the airport with someone wasn’t necessarily an awkward exchange at the curb while somebody in a uniform encouraged you to keep moving. Seeing someone off was an event. You went inside together. You waited together. You said goodbye at the gate. And when someone was coming home, you could be there when they arrived.
I’ve always felt that we overcorrected in some of our responses to 9/11. Obviously, aviation security needed to change, and I’m perfectly comfortable with people being screened before entering the secure part of an airport. But if someone can satisfy the security requirements, I’ve never understood why having a boarding pass should be the thing that determines whether they can go to the gate.
Apparently, we’re beginning to reconsider that. What really stopped me today, though, was realizing that 9/11 was almost exactly 25 years ago. That means there are plenty of adults today who have never experienced this at all. They’ve never waited at a gate for someone they love to come walking off an airplane. They’ve never accompanied someone through the airport knowing that the goodbye doesn’t happen until boarding begins. To them, the curbside goodbye isn’t something we changed to after 9/11. It’s simply how airports work. That’s one of the strange benefits of getting older. Every once in a while, something comes back that you didn’t fully appreciate before it disappeared, and you realize an entire generation never knew it was missing.
I hope Gateside expands. Security matters. But so do some of these little human rituals we’ve gradually engineered out of everyday life. Sometimes progress isn’t inventing something new. Sometimes it’s figuring out how to safely bring something good back.