Back in about 2007, I took a glass-fronted, framed metal crucifix through hand luggage on the way back from Italy. It caused a bit of a kerfuffle when it went through the scanner as there’s no doubt you could brain someone with the crucifix and stab someone by breaking the glass, but in the end the Italian security team obviously decided ‘it’s God, it’s not our place to question Him’ and they let me through.
One time my wife and I drove to DC from Chicago while another couple we knew flew there. Due to scheduling issues with our respective jobs, I then flew back to Chicago using my friend’s return ticket and he drove home with my wife. No issues when I boarded the plane and gave them my friend’s name.
I once took a large CRT degaussing coil through security. When the huge, opaque ring showed up on the x-ray, the security guy said "What’s THAT?” I opened up the bag an explained what it was for. They let me through.
I can confirm I’ve seen a passenger using a garbage bag, or maybe it was a plastic grocery bag, as a carry-on post-9/11.
Not that I wish to debate this with a professional airline pilot, but I, as a non-ticketed friend, was able to meet a friend, who was flying into O’Hare, at his gate, in August of 2001 (i.e., a month before 9/11). If there were restrictions about that, they weren’t universal, IME, until after 9/11.
This article, of unknown credibility, asserts that until 9/11 anyone willing to go through security (which definitely existed, and was similar to TSA-pre today) could go to the gate. That’s what i remember, too.
A Look at How Airport Security Has Evolved Post 9-11 | PHL.org.
As do I. It’s also an important plot point in a pre-9/11 King of the Hill thanksgiving episode:
(As is the establishment that bomb scares were a thing even pre-9/11, and that oddly shaped carry-ons might be subject to checking even if they meet the cubic feet requirements)
I’m sure not going to disagree w your personal experience.
My memory for details from 20 years ago is not what it was when I was 40 and the remembered details came from when I was 20. I have not fully adjusted my own attitude to my fallible memory and therefore my own posting habits yet. But I need to. Thanks for the correction.
It might have been per airport depending mostly on how crowded the gate areas were.
Dangerous liquids was not a concern back then. You could carry on your purchases from the duty free store, and you could carry on your lighter. So, multiple bottles of high proof alcohol and a steady flame. And an unlocked cockpit door. It was a different time…
I know for sure that it was still allowed well past the 80s. I moved across the country for college in 1988, and flew back and forth multiple times per year for a while. I have very clear, very connected to certain years, memories of nonticketed people being allowed at the gate. It was, I’m pretty certain, one of the things that did change post Sept. 11.
Not intending to rub it in – just providing another data point.
Is there any reason that would not be allowed now?
Here in Canada, for as long as I remember, non-ticketed people were never allowed to go to the gate. Prior to the introduction of metal detectors and x-rays in about 1972, they could get close, but they could never quite get all the way there. Airline staff prevented anybody without a boarding pass from going into the room that constituted a departure lounge for each gate.
After the introduction of metal detectors and x-ray machines in about 1972, there was no way they could go any further. If you did not have a boarding pass for a flight departing today, you were not going through security. At all. There was no reason you could give that would allow you through. None that I knew of, anyway.
So I was surprised when my sister could meet me at the gate when I arrived in Perth, Australia (1995 and 1999), and my business associate could meet me at the gate in Dallas (1999). There were a lot of people, families and friends, greeting arriving passengers when I travelled to places like LA, Chicago, and Sydney. It was apparent that Australian and American airports allowed anybody to go through security, but Canada did not. And still doesn’t, obviously.
You’ll get used to it.
In the US, today, it’s possible to get a pass to go through security. The last time my mother flew, i got a pass to help her.
For that matter, i once went to a meeting in an airport lounge that was inside security at O’Hare airport. I got there by not leaving security, but there were a few locals who got a pass to go to the meeting.
That’s not happening in Canada. Your mother needs help? We’ll get some airline staff to help her. Your daughter is taking her new baby someplace? We’ll get some airline staff to help her. Your dementia-addled nearly-blind father gets off the flight and cannot find the exit, well, you just wait, he’ll find one eventually.
Yeah, that happened to my own father. He wandered around Calgary Airport for three hours, while my sister (outside of security, of course) was almost screaming at whoever that he was off the flight, couldn’t see, was likely lost, and couldn’t find the exit. Airport staff and airline staff ignored her. It wasn’t until she alerted the police that anyone cared.
We need those kind of passes here in Canada.
There’s no downside. You are a known person with legitimate business in the airport who has to pass all the security checks any passenger goes through. My mom had a travel agent (apparently, they still exist) who arranged it for me. And it’s enough of a nuisance to do it that it’s uncommon, and doesn’t strain airport resources.
QFT - I’ve seen plenty of passengers carrying trash bags onto planes in the last several years.
In early 1995 my wife and I flew to Seattle to meet our 4 month old grandson (born, Dec. 1994, so I am certain of the year) and, as we got off the plane, our son and DIL were in the departure lounge holding the baby in the window for us to see. So it must have been possible for them to do through security without boarding passes.
In 1999 at Logan Airport you were definitely able to get to the gate after getting through security, but without a boarding pass, because I remember doing it that year.
Probably not. But, it freaked them out.
And I’ve carried stuff into an airplane in a random plastic bag post 9/11. I just put the bag on the belt at security, in one of those plastic bins to protect it.
Why wouldn’t you be allowed to carry stuff in a garbage bag, so long as the total volume of the stuff is acceptable?
There are bound to be crazy stories with bulky oversized souvenirs people would carry on planes. GIANT head gear THING from NYE 1999 Jamaica.