Originally Posted by ashill

The only US airports I'm aware of in which it's at all difficult to exit the departures secure area are very small ones which are only equipped to handle one departure at a time and for which arriving passengers are shunted off landside. EAT (Wenatchee, WA), which I fly in and out of often, is set up like this, and there isn't a (non-emergency) exit from the departures area that I know of. Certainly airports like this rarely if ever handle international traffic. But otherwise, I don't know of any US airport in which you can't easily leave the airside departures area for landside.