Woman Uses Costco ID to Get Through TSA
Jesse Tabit September 17, 2015
According to the Transportation of Security Administration (TSA) blog, anything that can be used to help security properly identify you in an airport (including a Costco membership card) will get you through to your flight on time. Erica Ho recently shared her travel experience following the loss of her ID over on Map Happy:
I approached the PreCheck line and explained the problem to the agent … The line was mega-long but a nice agent who realized my flight was leaving pretty soon put me in a shorter line. Then, the agent, after checking my Costco card and credit card, redirected me to another agent who escorted me to the front and did a full secondary screening and patdown on me. (I did happen to notice the security line specified a “picture ID” not a driver’s license so I felt a bit better.)
Then she sent me on my way. Man, I should really send Costco a thank you card.
[Photo: Stephen]
I saw a link to this post at another post. I've seen the same thing happen with my own eyes. I was in JFK going thru TSA and woman few people ahead of me didnt have any ID, only her Costco card. TSA agents took her out of line and escorted her somewhere. Fast forward 45 mins and I'm boarding my plane and see the same woman on the plane. Another true story - my parents live in Miami and went to my condo to get to storage locker (I dont live in Miami). In order to get key my mom had to drop off her drivers license at reception area. They went to storage unit, picked up some stuff, took it upstairs to my apartment and 30 mins later returned to front desk. My mom returned key and asked for her drivers license back but reception could not find it. It took them several minutes to figure out that another resident also borrowed a key and reception gave my moms drivers license to her by mistake. Reception looked thru their records and gave my mom the phone number of the woman that had her license. My mom called her and the woman said she is on the way to the airport now and cannot return my moms drivers license until she comes back. Somehow this woman was able to use my moms drivers license to travel to her destination and back.
You don't need to read FT to know you can possibly get through TSA check points without ID: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/identification It's actually posted on TSA's website.
If you read Flyertalk you would know you can pass TSA with no id