* We could get on an airplanes with little or no hassle ( no liquid restrictions, you could keep your shoes on, etc )
You always needed a boarding pass, or a pass saying you needed to accompany someone (for medical reasons, or for minors) to get through security.
Watch TV shows from the era (Friends, for example, or the Jet Li "Romeo and Juliet" movie) and you'll see the same thing: we used to be able to see people off at the gate. Such people still needed to go through security, of course, but they did not need a boarding pass to do so.
Doesn't sound like much of a business model. As I understand it, Plane Spotting is much more of a nerdy hobby with the goal of spotting unusual or interesting craft, as well as accumulating lots of 'spots':
In a hacker vein, some of these folks' observations were crucial to uncovering the secret CIA bases in eastern Europe:
Yes, you could. I feel a big difference hugging a loved one goodbye when they enter the security maze, compared to when they disappear from sight at the gate. They dribble away at the security maze, but man, at the gate they're taken from you. You see the plane door close and suddenly they're not even breathing the same air as you.
And when the plane taxis away, if you're at the gate you can press your face against the glass and watch, and wave if you're lucky. At some airports, like Seattle, it's possible to watch the plane through the entire taxi and takeoff. When my (now ex) wife flew from Seattle to China, I remember watching the MD11 take off, and following the plane until I couldn't see it and then the exhaust until I couldn't see it and finally watching nothing but empty sky.
Security theater merely irritates and angers me, but here they've taken away an emotional thing from me.
Undeserved downvotes folks.