I'm just curious: is there anything to prevent me from making up a name, buying a ticket using that assumed name, and then telling the airline at check-in that I have no ID or forgot my ID? the airline marks your boarding pass "SSSS". Then it seems all TSA does is ask why you have no ID, ask if you have any other identifying ID, and then does a secondary. But do they ever call the police to verify your information, and see if you are in the driver's license system...to make sure you are not flying under an alias?

Don't think that would work. Last December, my friend forgot his I.D. at LAX and TSA called up his utility company to verify his name (from the boarding pass) and address, besides the secondary.

I don't have any utilities in my name...so how would that work?

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

You could just go get a fake id. Of course that would be wrong. Just ask a college kid where to get one.

The only way I can think of to fly (domestic USA) under an alias without doing something "wrong" (either a fake ID or a fake BP) is to book a ticket under the alias, book a refundable ticket under your real name, use your real name and refundable BP to pass TSA, and then refund that ticket and fly on the alias ticket.

But any person who was willing to do something "wrong" could either just get a fake ID or book a ticket under a fake name but print up a fake BP with their real name on it to use at the TSA's ID checker. Since TSA doesn't verify that boarding passes or real or log name of people who pass the checkpoint, there would be no record of travel under the real name. This has been discussed here and elsewhere before.

While I generally laud any action that makes fools of the aviation security establishment, I cannot support OP's suggestion of flying using an alias, unless:

a) alias is going to be earning and redeeming frequent flyer miles
b) OP is in some kind of OJ - trash the bloody glove and get out of dodge type situation.

Bingo!

if there were any sites printing fake BP's though, TSA would shut them down in a heartbeat!

also, we could just be talking a situation where a woman (or man) books under her married name even though her ID still shows her maiden name.

or when someone has been using an alias for a long time but has never changed their ID and they don't want their associates to know about this.

or when a transgender person's ID still shows "M" for their boarding pass says "F".

there are lots of other cases such as these.

In these cases it might be more convenient to "forget" your ID or hide it in your checked baggage. (Do the secondary screeners do anything if your "forgotten" ID is found in your carry-on baggage??? would they even know you had "forogtten" your ID?)

You can do these things but they are illegal and probably will not work. In the meantime you're committing Federal crimes. Not intelligent. Not legal. Stupid. Won't work anyway.

Under what law would they do this?

see the site below for what TSA did to this guy:

http://www.dubfire.net/boarding_pass/

Perhaps the OP wants to use an alias to save embarrassment in the event of a liquid explosion while at security?

As others have pointed out ... if you don't have sufficient identity documents, you'll be asked to prove your identity by verifying information about your past history against public records (e.g. your credit report). So ... if you're gonna use an alias, you'd better have an intimate knowledge of your alias's past history.

In short ... that's not likely to work.

Of course, we've heard of people getting past the TDC with little more than a credit card and a warehouse club membership card, so ... there may be easier ways to get through.

Any half baked graphics editing program could copy and paste a fake name onto a boarding pass.

The TSA and FBI have shut down sites in the past, like this one

http://www.dubfire.net/boarding_pass/

but he links to one they have never bothered to shut down

http://j0hn4d4m5.bravehost.com/

I have no clue if it still generates a legitimate boarding pass or not.

Over a year ago they said they were buying thousands of scanners to read encrypted boarding pass bar codes to prevent people from faking them.

In reality though, anybody going through all this trouble would just have a fake ID and a legitimate ticket. It's far less risky then drawing attention without an ID.

Thanks! I tried that site but it didn't work. But i could copy the html code and images, and then print my own pass that way if I wanted to be criminal, which i am not!

Also, do you know a good place to get a high quality fake ID? I don't think it is as easy as people make it out to be.

You could, in theory, just print an ordinary boarding pass, scan it into an image editor like Photoshop, and then alter the salient details to whatever you'd like.

I don't think anyone's going to answer that question directly ... I mean, you're asking people to identify a known lawbreaker on a public website, right?

Seriously, though ... college towns are full of fake IDs.