Originally Posted by daw617
Right. But the airline is free to, of their own initiative, decline to transport you at their own discretion. Or, at least, that's what airline representatives have claimed to me. The problem is that airline security staff often view anyone who declines to present ID on privacy grounds as "suspicious, subversive characters" and thus might refuse transport. So if you absolutely have to get there, I would be leary of following the "don't show ID and fly selectee" route -- it might work 95% of the time, but that 5% is a ......
I agree with you. But before the airlines were ordered by the FAA to demand (firmly request, whatever) photo ID from their passengers, airlines uniformly did not. And once the initial requirements expired, most airlines stopped asking for photo ID. Of course it was easier for the airlines to demand ID when they could claim that it was a government requirement.
Airlines often treat their customers poorly, but I gotta think that there'd be an airline out there willing to skip the photo ID if the government didn't require that it be requested. Sometimes they actually compete.
