I had suspected that my recent travels without my ID weren’t too unique. Lending credence to that suspicion is an article from the San Francisco Chronicle from October 2004. Here’s a piece:
Three days later, when it was time to fly home from Las Vegas, I got to the airport three hours early. It was a good thing, too, because the security line snaked and folded back on itself, like a line at Disneyland. Stretched out fully, it must have been 200 or 300 yards long. Before I even got in line, I had to present my expired ID and tale of woe to a TSA employee.
“OK, sir, you’re going to have to go get in that line over there,” he said, pointing at a second security checkpoint, one with only one other person in line. He was directing me to the first-class line.
I showed the TSA agent my boarding pass with the not-quite scarlet letters “SSSS” on it; he pulled me aside for what I expected would be yet another full Monty. But all his colleague did was give me a perfunctory wanding. There was no pat-down, and no one opened my luggage.
Nor did anyone punch my boarding card. “Oh, that’s just a California thing,” said a gate agent when I asked her about it. “We don’t do that here.”
Well, that was about the fastest I’ve scooted through security, anywhere, since Sept. 11. But it didn’t leave me feeling confident about the thorough and consistent application of the TSA screening rules. When I got home, I called the local TSA office.
Or, as the title of the article and my experience suggest, “Rules are rules for air security — except when they’re not.”
Other assorted material on the web indicates that some people try to fly without ID as a kind of sport. Or, I should say, that they try to fly without showing ID. I can’t say that I recommend that. Although I am interested in learning more about how to get to go through the shortest security line.
