I was like 5 the first time I flew alone, and my family took me to the gate on one side and picked me up from the other gate. You never needed a ticket until 9/

I was like 5 the first time I flew alone, and my family took me to the gate on one side and picked me up from the other gate. You never needed a ticket until 9/11, just a simple security screening. When I was young, I forgot my Cub Scouts pocketknife in my pocket (2 of them actually) and they let me into the gate area with the knives. As long as it was < 2-3 inches for blades, they didn't care. Now we have a whole slew of intelligence agencies slurping up our data, we have hijacker-proof doors on the planes, we have bomb detection devices throughout airports "smelling" the air, etc. but we still need to remove our shoes and coats and everything else from our bags and get felt up by a TSA agent.