If anyone's interested...this thin picture book is from 1991. (Eve Bunting was born in Northern Ireland and now lives in California, in her 90s. She's written over 200 books - mostly juvenile - and won an Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1992.)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/855685.Fly_Away_Home

"A homeless boy who lives in an airport with his father, moving from terminal to terminal trying not to be noticed, is given hope when a trapped bird finally finds its freedom."

"There wasn’t a dramatic plot line in this book, it followed the typical week in the life of the boy and his father and the other people who live at the airport."

(You can also read it on YouTube. I have no idea if any - or how many - homeless people managed to do that before 9/11, but there are YouTube interviews of Bunting. Maybe she talks about it.)

Oh, yes - the book takes place in Chicago!

To be fair, I don't think it would have been the TSA's job to ferret out this individual. That would have been the job of airport security, which is separate from the TSA. The TSA only deals with screening the line of passengers and luggage waiting to enter the terminal in order to board their flights. He had the proper papers and only had to get past them once.

The TSA is currently more nuisance than security. Low pay and limited career growth opportunities are causing significant turnover in agents, so institutional memory is low. One in five agents quits within 6 months. This drives up recruitment and training costs, as well as slowing down operations as new employees get up to speed.

The TSA only deals with screening the line of passengers and luggage waiting to enter the terminal in order to board their flights. He had the proper papers and only had to get past them once.

That was also my thought. I'm on team #DefundTheTSA, but they are not a security patrol for the entire airport. Their purview is being shouty at people in the security line, rifling through bags IN the security line and confiscating dangerous breast milk IN the security line. I think they used to walk around and test people's drinks, but I haven't seen that in a while? In any case, their concern is what people bring ONTO the plane.

Now, the thing about this story that is causing my head to explode that this guy was so afraid of COVID-19 that he wouldn't get on his plane -- but spent MONTHS living in a vile airport, breathing the same air and touching the same surfaces and using the same bathrooms as everyone who came through in the past THREE MONTHS.

I spent a night in a terminal at O'Hare in 2019… AND WILL NEVER FLY THROUGH THAT AIRPORT AGAIN.

I spent a night in a terminal at O'Hare in 2019… AND WILL NEVER FLY THROUGH THAT AIRPORT AGAIN. ~ Crid at January 25, 2021 4:04 PM

I have a different airport hatred. I like O'Hare. It just works. I hate LAX. I've never missed a connecting flight at ORD and I've never made a connecting flight at LAX.

Seriously, the last time, I left myself plenty of time between flights to catch the shuttle bus and get to the other terminal. However, the sheer incompetence and sheer hatred for passengers that characterizes LAX was too great to be overcome. The inbound flight was late, the shuttle bus never showed, and the gate agent on the outbound flight closed the gate early, despite several passengers being on late-arriving flights from other gates. She actually made more work for herself rebooking us on other flights than if she'd held the gate for another five minutes. At O'Hare, they waited for passengers on late-arriving flights at other gates.

I spent a night in a terminal at O'Hare in 2019… AND WILL NEVER FLY THROUGH THAT AIRPORT AGAIN. ~ Crid at January 25, 2021 4:04 PM

I have a different airport hatred. I like O'Hare. It just works. I hate LAX. I've never missed a connecting flight at ORD and I've never made a connecting flight at LAX.”

SeaTAC. Horrible.

Until the day I die, I'll blame writhing, festering SeaTac for giving me Covid, blossoming with psychosis-inducing fury on NYE 2019. We didn't have a name for it then, but that's where it came into my life.

LAX is ridiculous, but it's spacious enough that you can find a place where you won't have to touch other people's bodies while your plane taxis in.

O'Hare won't protect you from the fleshy, seatbusting Chicago corpulence OR the reprehensible airline staffers. (Hi, American!)

And it sure won't protect you from CNN roaring through an otherwise-unpopulated gate from an unreachably-mounted monitor at three in the morning.

Also there's the automated traffic ticket you're going to get when traversing the spaghetti traffic patterns to return a rental car.

And I've come close to missing connections there more times than I can count. Getting from a big ship to gate with a regional dinghy can be a serious aerobic challenge.

Never again. Weddings, funerals, coronations, my own surgery, whatever. Sorry to be late, but they tried to route me through O'HARE....

…Though true enough, LAX did turn towards intolerable when they set up the offsite taxi/rideshare.

You want to talk flight misery? Gather 'round children while Grandpa Jim tells you a story:
I was in Guam, at the Air Force base awaiting transport to San Diego, because I was transferring from one submarine to another. My XO, instead of booking me on a commercial flight, puts me as Space Available on Military Airlift Command. I will hate him forever for that.
I was travelling with a Lieutenant who was also being transferred, so I had a bit of company. Now, the rules for Navy travelling Space Available were that we came before civilians, but after any Air Force personnel. For the next 23 hours, every time a seat became available, we got bumped. We couldn't leave, because we never knew when a flight would be departing, so we sat around in our uniforms. Oh, yes, another indignity. We HAD to travel in uniform! This will also play a part later.
Once we got a flight, it was a huge cargo plane. The seats all faced backwards. One of the flight crew came through and handed out wax earplugs and a box lunch. Oh, joy, a dried out sandwich and chips.
After I-don't-remember-how-many-hours we landed in Pearl Harbor, to change planes. How much worse could things get? This much. It was a charter flight through MAC. On board were a bunch of families headed back to the mainland, along with a handful of discharged Marines, who were already drunk. The plane was packed, but we knew we'd be back in the mainland before long.
The plane taxied out, and then pulled off onto a side strip, and stopped. The air conditioning had quit, and rather than pull back into the terminal, we sat on the tarmac. In Hawaii. In a crowded airplane, with no AC. Cue the drunk Marines, who started getting very rowdy and obnoxious. This caused several small children to start crying, while the fathers of the families tried to get the Marines to settle down.
Two hours later, we finally were airborne. About the time we got to San Francisco, the plane cooled down below 90. We both piled out of the plane, just exhausted and sweaty. We both decided we'd had enough of the joy of MAC, so we bought our own tickets on a commercial flight back to San Diego. We went to the gate, and started trying to find a place to collapse for a while. The seats were all taken, but there was an Oriental family sitting up front. They must have seen how bedraggled and tired we looked, and offered us their seats.
Immediately, some random lady comes up and starts yelling at us for MAKING them move, that we were just horrible baby killers and just making a huge scene. The Lieutenant stood up, and I really thought he was going to deck her, but she eventually left.
We finally got on a plane with forward-facing seats, no other military, and got down to San Diego, finally! I checked into the barracks at the Submarine Base, got a quick shower, and collapsed in a heap. Never loved a barracks room more in my life!