The TSA wants to make it crystal clear that a Costco membership card won’t work as a REAL ID.
Officials from the Transportation Security Administration took to the agency’s Facebook page to deliver this crucial message, letting everyone know that Costco membership cards simply won’t get you through airport security.
“We love hotdogs & rotisseries 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 post states.
This misconception traces back to a food website called Chowhound that spread the persistent myth. In a piece titled “How Your Costco Card Could Save You At The Airport,” the site claimed: “Yes, it’s true: TSA has frequently accepted Costco membership cards as a form of valid ID.”
TSA spokesperson Lorie Dankers told SF Gate that this belief is both outdated and wrong. “Let me tell you something about that. Whoever wrote that story is recycling old material,” Dankers explained. “Essentially, what the process they’re describing is … let’s say you lost your ID and only had a Costco card in your pocket. That would help establish a baseline identity for you. The TSA officer would use that as a starting point to confirm your identity, but they would still have to go through our identity verification process.”
While Dankers acknowledged that having a Costco card beats having no identification whatsoever, she strongly urged people to avoid this scenario entirely by obtaining a REAL ID. “We don’t want to oversell this as an option,” she cautioned.
REAL IDs became mandatory for most adults flying domestically starting May 7. This enhanced identification (whether a driver’s license or other state-issued ID) satisfies security standards established by a 2005 law enacted following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
