Gateside's List of 13 Does Not Include Sea-Tac.

If you are flying out of Seattle this week and a local recap told you Gateside still works there, check the list before you build the morning around a gate hug. KPQ’s October 23 piece says Sea-Tac is one of the 13 pilot airports, so the program is still available there. The TSA page I read on October 26 lists 13 airports. Seattle-Tacoma is not among them.

That is the practical split. The rollback story is real in the trade press. The airport you can actually request a pass for is the one still on the portal. A September note on this site, TSA Gateside: Non-Travelers Can Reach the Gate at 13 Airports, described the pilot as it stood on September 9. The October articles add a nationwide expansion and a quiet reversal. They do not all add the same thirteenth airport.

The Gateside list on tsa.gov is a code list, not a region

The live page says the program is available at 13 airports and will roll out to more airports across the country in the coming months. The FAQ repeats the count and the phase: Gateside by TSA PreCheck is only available at 13 airports in the initial phase, and if your airport does not appear, it does not participate yet. TSA, on that same FAQ, says it is adding airports in a phased approach.

The 13 codes on the page, in the order I copied them:

1. Mesa Gateway (AZA)
2. John Glenn Columbus (CMH)
3. Dallas Fort Worth (DFW)
4. Detroit Metro (DTW)
5. Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower (ICT)
6. Indianapolis (IND)
7. Harry Reid, Las Vegas (LAS)
8. Los Angeles (LAX)
9. Bill and Hillary Clinton National, Little Rock (LIT)
10. Will Rogers International, Oklahoma City (OKC)
11. Eppley, Omaha (OMA)
12. San Diego (SAN)
13. Salt Lake City (SLC)

That is 13. SEA is not a fourteenth that the page forgot to number. It is absent. If you are standing in Seattle with a KPQ screenshot, the screenshot and the portal are not describing the same set.

Travel Market Report’s October 20 account, by Daniel McCarthy, prints the same 13 codes. Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Little Rock, Phoenix-Mesa, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Wichita. No Sea-Tac. KPQ is the outlier in the set I read, and it is the one a Washington traveler is most likely to trust, because it is written as local good news.

There is a smaller name split inside the list that does match. TMR calls OKC “Will Rogers World Airport.” The TSA page calls it “Will Rogers International Airport.” Same code. If you are searching the portal by the nickname in a headline, search the code. OKC is on the list. The adjective in the middle of the name is not the test.

October 13 is in the writeups. It is not in the FAQ I read.

The expansion and the reversal are dated in the press, not on the page that still says “coming months.”

McCarthy’s lede is a clock: just 12 days after expanding Gateside to roughly 300 airports nationwide, TSA scaled the initiative back to the original 13 test hubs. He places the original launch in early September. On October 1, he writes, TSA opened application portals for hundreds of commercial airports. By October 13, those additional airports were scrubbed from the portal without advance notice. TSA, in that piece, had not released a full explanation. The line he records is evaluation: participation levels, operational impacts, and overall security posture. He also records the agency’s softer frame, that the nationwide expansion is merely paused, and that no official timeline has been given for when, or if, the other airports reopen.

Inc.’s October 19 story, by Kevin Haynes, has a TSA sentence the trade piece does not quote in full. “Gateside by TSA PreCheck is currently in the operational assessment phase at 13 airports across the nation,” the agency said. “TSA is evaluating participation levels and assessing operational impacts. This assessment is proving that TSA’s security posture remains strong while delivering innovative benefits to PreCheck customers.”

Read that against the FAQ. The FAQ still tells a rollout story: coming months, phased approach, your airport does not participate yet. The statement Inc prints tells an assessment story: 13 airports, participation and operational impacts under review. Both can be true if “yet” means “after the assessment.” They are not the same instruction. “Yet” sends you to check back. “Operational assessment phase” with no date sends you to the 13 codes and nowhere else.

KPQ, published October 23, uses the assessment phrase and adds a local report TMR and Inc do not. Some airports, including Norfolk International, say they were told the program is on hold indefinitely, aside from the pilot sites. Norfolk is not on the TSA list I copied. “On hold indefinitely” is a stronger sentence than “coming months.” It is also not a sentence I found on tsa.gov. If your airport emailed you that the October portal opening was withdrawn, believe the email about your airport. Do not generalize it into a date for Columbus.

KPQ’s own timeline matches the others on the broad strokes and misses them on the day. Soft launch September 9 at 13 airports. Early October, expansion to roughly 300. Less than two weeks later, rollback to the original 13, without an announcement. “Early October” is not October 1. “Less than two weeks later” can be October 13 if you start on October 1, and it can be something else if you start on October 3. TMR and Inc both print October 1 and October 13. Use those two dates when you are arguing about the portal. Use “early October” only when you are quoting KPQ.

Inc’s headline is 12 days. The body is less than three weeks.

The Inc headline is the clean clock: TSA brought back a pre-9/11 airport ritual, and 12 days later it reversed course. October 1 to October 13 is 12 days. That matches McCarthy’s “just 12 days.”

The body on the same Inc page uses a different clock in the second paragraph I read: less than three weeks after allowing PreCheck members through security without a plane ticket at hundreds of airports, TSA rolled the program back to the 13 airports where it was introduced last month. “Last month” points at the September debut, not at October 1. Early September to October 13 is more than three weeks. October 1 to October 13 is 12 days, which is less than three weeks, and it is also the headline.

I am not going to merge those into “about two weeks.” If you are telling a relative when the extra airports disappeared, the date in Inc’s reporting of the grounding is October 13. The “less than three weeks” sentence is a summary that can be read as starting at the debut. The debut is not when hundreds of airports opened. TMR, Inc, and KPQ agree the wide opening was the October move. Inc and TMR date that move to October 1.

Inc also quotes an earlier TSA line from the announcement, about returning to the gate for welcomes and send-offs. That sentence describes the pitch. It does not describe the October 13 portal. Do not pack it in a group chat as proof your airport still issues passes.

If your code is on the list, the rules are narrower than “show up”

The pass is free in every account I used. TMR, Inc, and KPQ all say that. The TSA page does not, in the sections I could use, print a price for the Gateside pass itself. It does print a different fee, and people will staple the two together. “You can verify your identity using TSA ConfirmID. The $45 fee will apply.” That sentence sits on the Gateside page. It is a ConfirmID sentence. I am not going to turn it into “Gateside costs $45.” If the officer asks for ConfirmID because the ID check failed, that fee is the one the page names. The pass request, in the trade pieces, is free. Ask which one you are paying for before you pay.

Timing is the part that will burn a same-day surprise visit. The TSA page says you must apply at least one day before your visit and no more than three days in advance. A timing box on the same page shortens that to “Apply 1-3 days before your planned visit.” TMR says passes must be requested one to three days prior via the login.gov portal. Inc says the same window. KPQ says one to three days before. Four sources, one window. A pass for a flight that lands this afternoon is already late if you have not applied.

The pass, once approved, is valid for one calendar day, and re-entry is allowed on that date. That is the TSA page, not a blog paraphrase. It is not a weekend credential. It is not “I’m in the airport until my brother’s Thursday flight.” Thursday needs its own request, inside the 1-to-3-day window, and the airport may already have hit its cap.

Each participating airport sets limits on the number of passes issued for each day. The page says that if your information is correct and you were still denied, the airport may have reached its limit for the selected day. A denial is not proof the program ended. It can be a full day at DFW. Try another date inside the window, or accept that the day is full. Do not drive to the checkpoint to argue a denial the portal already recorded.

The identity match is exact. Name, date of birth, and KTN must match the TSA PreCheck application. Global Entry and other trusted-traveler KTNs are in TMR’s eligibility line: an active KTN through TSA PreCheck, Global Entry, or an eligible federal trusted traveler program. The TSA page’s match rule is written against the PreCheck application. If your KTN lives on a Global Entry record and the portal rejects the PreCheck-shaped name, that is a data problem, not a Sea-Tac problem. Fix the string before you blame the rollback.

Children are allowed, and the proof is the live portal, not a printout. The page says to add children with the “add visitor” option, on the parent or guardian’s reservation. At the checkpoint you may need to log in and show the officer the dashboard. Screenshots or printouts will not be accepted. Any reservation that includes children has to be verified that way so everyone at the lane is on the reservation. Log in before you hand over the ID. A dead phone is not a technicality the page budgets for.

You use the TSA PreCheck lane, not the Touchless ID lane. Visitors are subject to the same screening requirements and limits as ticketed passengers. An acceptable ID is required. PreCheck membership does not swap in a face-only lane for a non-traveler on a Gateside pass.

Airline gate passes still exist, and they are a different product. The TSA page says airlines issue them in very limited instances, such as accompanying a minor, a person with disabilities, or a military member. People with those passes must use standard screening lanes, regardless of TSA PreCheck membership. Gateside is the broader visit: meeting family at the gate, a long layover meal, a business associate, dining and retail past the checkpoint. If the airline desk offered you a gate pass for a minor, you are in the standard lane even if you have a KTN. Do not walk that pass to the PreCheck entrance because a blog used both phrases.

What to do with the September post, and with a water bottle

The September 9 note is still right about the shape of the pilot: non-travelers, a short list, a pass rather than a boarding pass. It is not a list to navigate by after October 13. The live list is the one on tsa.gov. If your code is on it, apply one to three days out, on login.gov, and assume a daily cap. If your code is not on it, KPQ’s Sea-Tac sentence does not put it there.

Norfolk’s “on hold indefinitely,” as KPQ reports it, is a warning for airports that were added in the October wave and then removed. It is not a status line for SLC or SAN. Those two are on the page. Seattle is in the KPQ sentence and not on the page. I would not book a non-traveler pickup at Sea-Tac on the strength of a radio site’s “still available.”

Two nearby airport problems are not this one. The checkpoint rewrite around water bottles is about what a PreCheck passenger may carry, not about whether a non-traveler can reach the gate. The DOT delay-code date moved to February 1, 2027. A Gateside pass does not change who the airline blames for a delay, and a delay code does not get you past the checkpoint at an airport that left the portal on October 13.

If you already applied during the wide window for an airport that is no longer listed, treat the approval as expired until the portal says otherwise. None of the four sources I used printed a grace period for passes issued between October 1 and October 13 for airports outside the 13. I am not going to invent one so the ending feels kinder. Open the portal. If the airport is gone, the pass is not a plan.