Succesfully flew without ID, San Francisco, December 19, 2007

Airline: United
Airport: San Francisco
ID Offered: None
Date: December 19, 2007
Reference: Personal
Reason given: Want to be a selectee
Result: Successful
Description: In the security line, I told the TSA agent that I want to fly as a selectee. She mumbled "you forgot your ID" and I responded "I want to fly as a selectee." She handed me off to another agent who scribbled "SSSS" on my boarding pass and directed me to a line for selectees, which shared a metal detector with a regular line. The only difference is that bins in our line were brown instead of grey. I let several people go ahead of me, since I had plenty of time before my flight and they were running late. The line was moving slowly but everything was orderly and pleasant. My items were swab tested (before I even caught up to them) and I asked for a manual pat down instead of going through a puff machine. No information was recorded, and no one asked to see my boarding pass after the initial agent directed me to the selectee line. This has been one of the best experiences flying without ID. This may be due to the fact that these agents at San Francisco are not actually TSA agents, but from a private firm. Their uniforms display labels of both the TSA and the private firm.

United Airlines, March, 2007, Successful

Airline: United
Airport: ??
ID Offered: None
Date: March, 2007
Reference: syzygy

Reason given: Choice
Result: Successful.
Description: the lady at the United desk was quite helpful and didn’t ask any questions about why I did not have ID. She printed me new tickets with bold “SSSS” printed several times on the ticket and told me that I would need to go through extra security. The TSA workers were also quite friendly and did not pose a problem. They bumped me to the front of the line to go through the metal dector machine, and then took me to a side area for a hand search of my carry-on bag. The first thing they did was use a hand metal detector and wand me again, and then did a quick pat down on my arms and legs. A frisk seems quite unecessary to me, and the only saving grace was the fact that the guy didn’t seem to want to do it any more than I did. The agent was very nice and told me exactly what he was going to do beforehand. After the frisk, the TSA agent swabbed all items in my carry-on and ran the swap through a explosive detection machine. Every item was swabbed individually, making this the most time consiming part of the search. The last item that the TSA agent swabbed was my TI-89 calculator, which, unfortunately, set off the explosive detection machine. A simple rerun through the x-ray machine satisified the supervising agent and they sent me on my way. Overall, the first flight security was OK, and took about 10 minutes total.