One Man’s Nightmare of Trying to Fly Without ID

When flying on a commercial airline, you have to go through security before you can get to the air side of the terminal. When you get to the security checkpoint, you have to show your ID (but sometimes not your boarding pass anymore. Here’s why), and once the TSA officer confirms that you are scheduled to be on such-and-such a flight that day, they let you continue on to the scanners so you and the bags you’re going to carry onto the plane can be screened.

Every once in a while though, someone won’t have their ID. Whatever the reason – they lost it, it got stolen, or they just forgot it – the TSA is prepared and may allow a passenger to go through the checkpoint without having ID on them, once they go through a certain process (more info about that can be found here).

When we wrote that piece, we were mainly reiterating what the TSA said. Happily, we’ve never arrived at the airport without our ID (although there was that time I couldn’t find our passports the night before we went to Japan), so we couldn’t tell you what happened from personal experience.

But this guy can.

San Francisco resident Connor Esraelian was recently scheduled to be on a Chicago-bound flight. When he got to the airport, he realized that, as well prepared as he thought he had been for his trip, he had left his wallet at home. With that, he didn’t have any ID. Nor did he have time to go back home to get it.

“This was a genuine mistake in my rush to the airport, I simply forgot it,” Esraelian said in a TikTok “mini documentary.” “I decided to just see what happens if I tried boarding the plane with no identification.”

The TSA agents were as prepared as could be and, to prove that he was who he said he was, made Esraelian spend about an hour and 15 minutes answering questions about his life.

“When I went to present my boarding pass, I told them the situation. They told me to wait for an airport-security agent to personally assist me. Once they arrived, the agent called a government hotline.

“Somehow, the person on the line knows everything about you,” Esraelian told Newsweek. “It’s a bit creepy. I have no idea how they know so much. They asked me to name a few of my previous addresses, a notable landmark near my current home, and what year my father was born. I even got my father’s birth year wrong, and the person on the phone told me it was incorrect.

“If you pass the test, they do a very detailed check of all your luggage, and finally they will let you onto your flight,” Esraelian said.

He made it onto his flight, but with only minutes to spare.

Some things he didn’t include in the video:

• They hand searched and drug tested all his stuff
• They did a whole body search (he reiterated “whole body”)
• He would have to go through the whole thing on his way back to San Francisco, since his wallet would still be at home.

“The whole experience was a nightmare. Let me be a lesson to others: please bring your ID to the airport,” Esraelian added.

And WE will illiterate to give yourself enough time to be ready for ANYTHING when you get to the airport. Here’s a guide for how early you should arrive at the airport nowadays.

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary

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