Here in our post-REAL ID world, there are several forms of ID you can use to get through a TSA checkpoint and into the concourse to board your flight. You can use a REAL ID-compliant state ID or driver's license, you can use a passport or passport card, or you can use a valid military ID card.
This may come as a shock to some, but you can't use your Costco membership card. Sorry.
The Transportation Security Administration clarified this week that a Costco membership card is not sufficient to present at airport security.
"We love hotdogs & rotisserie chickens as much as the next person but please stop telling people their Costco card counts as a REAL ID because it absolutely does not," the TSA wrote on Facebook Wednesday.
The reminder comes less than a month after the U.S. began requiring a REAL ID driver's license when flying domestically May 7.
Aside from REAL IDs, which have enhanced federal standards, domestic flyers can also use their passports or another federally-approved form of identification like Defense Department-issued IDs (but not a Costco card).
"Department of Defense IDs for active and retired military continue to be an acceptable form of ID at TSA checkpoints following the implementation of REAL ID last month," the TSA wrote on Facebook Thursday.
Who, honestly, thought that this was a real thing?
Years ago, I once watched a passenger at Los Angeles International Airport bluff his way through the TDA checkpoint by showing his American Express card and vociferously denying that he had any other ID with him. After some discussion and the summoning of a supervisor, they let the guy through. I was not terribly surprised to hear him and his buddy laughing about it in the concourse a few moments later. He did, of course, have his driver's license with him and just wanted to try a dumb stunt, which he got away with.
I have for years routinely used my United States passport card at TSA. I reckon that since I have it, I'll use it. You can enter Canada and Mexico with the card, saving the trouble of carrying your proper passport, and there's some great fishing over in the Yukon. And, of course, the passport card works for TSA. Once, in the pre-REAL ID world, I used a Colorado-issued concealed-carry permit, which was a government-issued photo ID. It worked.
That was then, this is now. We can discuss the ups and downs of the current airport security system another time - personally, I think that we should privatize the whole thing. But this is the system we have, and if you have to fly anywhere or enter any space where TSA is screening, then you have to have a REAL ID.
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It behooves one to be prepared. Our Alaska driver's licenses are REAL ID compliant. Everyone has known for a long time that this was coming. I'm not a fan of the system, but the system it is, and if we want to see our kids and grandchildren, that means flying, and that means having a REAL ID.
A Costco card isn't a REAL ID. It's rather puzzling that anyone would think this would work. Who, by now, doesn't know this?
As comedian Bill Engvall would say: Here's your sign.
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