United Holds the Keys to Newark’s New TSA E-Gates

TSA opened four e-gates at Newark Liberty’s United Terminal C on September 2, and only Touchless ID United flyers can walk through them. Eligible travelers step into a booth, face a camera, and the glass parts in under three seconds, with no officer taking a license. Everyone else in the same hall still hands over an ID at a podium.

The hardware is federal. The guest list is United’s. Bags still go through the usual scan after the glass, so the speed claim is about the ID step, not the whole checkpoint.

Four Lanes in United’s Terminal C

The new lanes sit in Terminal C, United’s hub at Newark, and they are a small cluster, not a terminal-wide rebuild. Travelers walk up, pause for a photo, and the translucent doors open if the live face matches passport data already on file. There is no boarding-pass scan and no chat with a document checker if the match works.

Greg Hawko, TSA’s federal security director at Newark, said the agency is now “screening people in under three seconds.” He tied that clip to staffing, not to a shorter vacation. “This is allowing us to deploy our resources and use our resources in the most efficient and effective way to continue to provide security to the two million people who travel every day,” Hawko said.

United officials said one employee can run a set of four lanes, a lighter crew than the usual ID-and-boarding-pass desks. Allan Twigg, managing director of United’s EWR Systems Operations Center, called the rollout “the next evolution of technology” and said the airline has been working with TSA to streamline screening for its customers. Heading into the Labor Day weekend of September 4 through 7, Twigg said about 600,000 passengers would travel through Newark Airport.

THE NEWARK GATE AT A GLANCE

• Where it runs: Four automated lanes in United’s Terminal C, beside regular ID lines that still take a physical credential.
• Who it admits: TSA PreCheck members flying United who uploaded a passport, stored a Known Traveler Number, and opted into Touchless ID.
• What it skips: The handoff of a license, passport, and boarding pass at the first podium, plus the talk with an officer.
• What it does not skip: Bag screening and the body scanner; a REAL ID still has to travel with you in case an officer asks.

Hawko has been careful about the “first in the nation” line. He said Newark is the first airport to get “this particular version of the technology,” which is the unmanned, no-document path. Charlotte already ran a related e-gate that still asked most PreCheck flyers to scan an ID.

United Holds the Keys to the Checkpoint

Touchless ID is a TSA program, and it is available at 65 airports with participating carriers. At Newark’s new booths, the live rule is narrower. You need to be in PreCheck, you need to be on a United itinerary through Terminal C, and you need the Touchless ID mark on your mobile boarding pass. Without that mark, the glass stays shut.

United’s own security page is the enrollment desk. Save your passport and Known Traveler Number in a MileagePlus account, open the TSA PreCheck and travel documents screen in the app, then opt in on the same page and accept the airline’s facial-scan permission. Each person in a family has to do that in a separate account before check-in. United still tells customers to bring a physical REAL ID to the airport.

How to Opt In Through the United App

Opting in takes about 3 to 5 minutes if your Known Traveler Number, passport number, and consent are already sitting in the airline profile, TSA says, and it can take longer if you wait until you are standing in the terminal. The surest check is a boarding pass that shows the Touchless ID indicator at least 24 hours before departure. No indicator means the e-gate will not open, even if you already have PreCheck.

HOW TO OPEN THE UNITED GATES

1. Confirm PreCheck. Status costs $78 for five years for U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, and lawful permanent residents, and the Known Traveler Number has to be on the reservation.
2. Load the passport. Enter a valid passport number and country in the United app, the same data you would store for an international trip.
3. Hit opt in. Grant permission to use a facial scan as ID, then look for the Touchless ID mark on the mobile boarding pass after TSA confirms enrollment.
4. Carry a backup ID. Officers can still ask for a REAL ID-compliant document, and a failed match dumps you into a manual check.

TSA also lets travelers opt in through Google Wallet, a path it opened on June 24, 2026, so a Google ID pass backed by a U.S. passport can replace a frequent-flyer profile at participating airports. Newark’s operators, describing these four lanes, still walked people through the United app. A Wallet enrollment does not move you into a different terminal, and it does not help if you are not flying United out of Terminal C.

At Charlotte, Any PreCheck Card Worked

The Newark booths are easy to confuse with the Charlotte test because they share a name and a camera. They do not share a guest list. Charlotte Douglas put eight e-Gates at Checkpoint 2 for TSA PreCheck, with an operational assessment that began in early May 2026 and collected data through July. Most of those flyers still fed a REAL ID, passport, or phone ID into a reader, then posed for a photo. Only the subset already on Touchless ID walked through with no document in hand.

CLT said the gates shave about three seconds off each passenger at the ID step and free officers who used to stand at that desk. In summer the airport screens closer to 40,000 people a day, and volume can reach 44,000. Hawko, speaking there in June as Charlotte’s federal security director, said the airport’s spending on checkpoint power and build-out is what made the trial possible. Reagan Washington National also hosted testing. Newark is the first site where the unmanned, passport-on-file version is the product being sold to the public.

THE ROAD TO NEWARK’S GATES

1. August 2025: CLEAR begins deploying paid biometric eGates at U.S. checkpoints, a private booth that opens after a face match.
2. October 2025: CLEAR eGates go live at some Newark TSA checkpoints, about a year before TSA’s own Terminal C booths.
3. Early May 2026: Charlotte starts an eight-lane e-gate assessment at Checkpoint 2 for PreCheck, including a Touchless ID shortcut for people who already opted in.
4. June 24, 2026: TSA adds a Google Wallet opt-in so Touchless ID is not limited to a frequent-flyer profile.
5. September 2, 2026: TSA opens four e-gates in Newark’s United Terminal C for United flyers on Touchless ID.

The pattern is not “biometrics arrived at Newark.” It is that the same glass box now has three different bouncers, depending on which airport and which program you bought into.

THREE WAYS THROUGH A FACE SCAN

Charlotte’s wider PreCheck rule is the tell. When TSA wants volume, it lets the whole trusted-traveler list through. When it wants a clean unmanned booth at Newark, it leans on United’s passport file.

Who Still Hands Over a Driver’s License?

Most people in Terminal C will not see the glass open. PreCheck alone is not enough. A United boarding pass alone is not enough. A passport in a drawer at home is not enough. The e-gate is a stacked filter, and each missing piece drops you back to an officer.

WHO THE NEWARK GATES TURN AWAY

• Other airlines: Terminal C is United’s house, so a PreCheck flyer on another carrier does not get this booth.
• United without Touchless ID: Elite status, a Premier line, and a KTN on the pass still leave you at the old podium if you never opted in.
• No passport on file: A driver’s license that works for ordinary PreCheck does not load the gallery these gates match against.
• Photo refusers: You can skip the camera and take a manual ID check, which means you are choosing the human lane on purpose.
• Other Newark terminals: Hawko has said there is no current plan to install the same gates elsewhere in the airport, even as he hopes that changes.

That last group is the quiet majority at a New York-area hub. Terminal A already spent years as the shiny security story, with 3-D bag scanners and open body imagers. The new e-gates did not follow those passengers. They followed United’s checkpoint.

CLEAR’s Paid Gates Got There First

TSA is late to its own silhouette. CLEAR, the paid identity firm, has been installing eGates that look like cousins of the Newark booths, and Newark was already on that map. CLEAR eGates showed up at some TSA checkpoints there in October 2025. Members look at a screen, wait about five seconds, and two plexiglass wings open. TSA still owns the checkpoint and can pull someone for a physical ID.

CLEAR said in a June 30, 2026 post that its eGates have completed more than 11 million traveler verifications across 48 airports since August 2025, with a match that takes less than 5 seconds. The company says it operates in 172 TSA checkpoints across 65 major U.S. airports and counts more than 41 million members. Those figures are CLEAR’s. They are useful because they show the paid product already scaled while TSA’s public version is four lanes in one terminal.

The practical split is simple. CLEAR sells a jump to the front of a document line to anyone who joins, on any airline in the airports where it has gear. TSA’s Newark e-gates cost nothing extra on top of PreCheck, then ask for a United itinerary and a passport sitting in the airline’s database. Frequent flyers who already bounce through European automated exits will treat the Terminal C booth as catch-up. Travelers who never opted into a face file will treat it as a lane they cannot enter.

The Camera You Can Still Refuse

Hawko went out of his way in Newark to separate matching from recognition, and to promise that the live picture does not linger. TSA’s public Touchless ID rules are a little less cinematic. The agency says photos and personal data from that program are deleted within 24 hours of scheduled departure, not at the second the door opens. Standard CAT-2 podium cameras, now at about 350 airports, are a different system: they compare your face with the ID you just handed over, and TSA says those live photos are not stored after a good match except in limited tests.

It is facial matching. It’s not facial recognition software of any kind. It takes your passport that you have entered into your frequent flyer account on the airline, just like you would for international travel, and that is vetted through the State Department, CBP. We’re able to prescreen that and have your picture that matches. The picture that’s taken is immediately deleted.

Greg Hawko, TSA federal security director at Newark

A 24-hour hold is a hard sell for anyone who would rather pass a plastic license to a person and walk on. That is the trade the unmanned booth asks you to make, and it is why some travelers will keep the officer lane even when the glass is empty. TSA’s written policy still lets you decline the optional photo and take a manual ID check with no penalty and no lost place in line. Signs and screen text are supposed to say so. Children under 18 are not photographed at the CAT-2 podium cameras.

Opting out of a photo is not the same as using the e-gate. The Newark booths exist to replace the officer with a camera. If you do not want the camera, you are not in that product. You are in the older line, which is still right next to it.

Hawko’s Next Ask Is the Rest of Newark

The four lanes survived the Labor Day crush they were timed for, and they are still a United Terminal C tool, not a Newark-wide one. Hawko said people keep asking when they can get the same gates at their airport or in another terminal. “Our hope is that in the near future we’ll be able to do that,” he said. He did not attach a date, and he has already said there is no current plan to spread them through the rest of EWR.

Until that plan shows up, the public checkpoint at Newark’s biggest carrier has a new shape. TSA built the glass. United keeps the list. CLEAR already rents a similar door to anyone who pays. The officer with a flashlight on a driver’s license is still there for everyone who is not on that list, which is most of the hall.