- March 16, 2026
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Upon the recent opening of the area’s first Wahlburgers restaurant, the revamp of food and beverage offerings in Concourse B at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport is complete.
Only ticket-holding passengers, though, can visit the location and sample the fare brought by the famous Wahlberg brothers — actors Donnie and Mark — and executive chef Paul. That could change in the future as the airport is exploring the possibility of joining several others nationwide in partnership with TSA to allow non-ticketed passengers beyond the security checkpoints.
“Our hope is that, in the near future, you won’t need to buy a ticket to go airside,” SRQ President and CEO Paul Hoback told the Sarasota Observer, sister paper of the Business Observer. “We're working with the TSA right now to possibly allow for an opportunity for people to go airside without being ticketed.”
It’s a program piloted in 2017 at Hoback’s previous post, Pittsburgh International Airport. Dubbed there as myPITpass, the guest pass concept is growing in popularity at airports of a variety of sizes across the country, including Tampa International Airport.
The guest pass program is a nod to the bygone era of friends and family sending off or greeting arriving passengers at the gate. Security checkpoints, passenger screening and access restrictions were implemented after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and remain in effect at almost all U.S. airports.
Guest access isn’t open to everyone as participating airports limit the numbers of passes available and typically restrict hours of access to non-peak travel times. The TPA All Access program, for example, limits pass pickup to between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. and caps six guests per airside in two-hour entry blocks. In addition, guests are limited to one airside per visit and each must be individually registered and cleared.
“We were the first airport to do it and it was very successful,” Hoback says of myPITpass. “It wasn't during peak times like 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. because we didn't want to overload the checkpoints. They stopped it during COVID, and the TSA has brought it back, and they’re polling airports to see if they're interested.
“We said we are very interested.”
The myPITpass program has yet to resume since suspended in 2020 because of airport expansion and renovations at PIT, which were led by Hoback. There are at least 19 participating airports across the country, among the most notable:
In addition to restoring some of the nostalgia of pre-9/11 air travel, guest passes will contribute to an airport’s bottom line by allowing more people into the airside areas where they may spend money at trendy airport bars, designer boutiques and, in the the case of SRQ, sample the fare at such restaurants as Wahlburgers or Huey Magoo’s Chicken, which are otherwise currently unavailable locally.
A version of this article originally appeared on sister site YourObserver.com.
