Planning to fly? You’ll need this ID

It’s a change nearly 20 years in the making: a post-Sept. 11 law requiring that US travelers carry more than a standard driver’s license to board a domestic flight. Now, after years of delays, it is finally kicking into gear. Beginning May 3, 2023, US travelers flying within the United States will need to show TSA agents either a security-enhanced driver’s license that’s Real ID-compliant or another TSA-approved form of identification like a passport. A state driver’s license that does not contain the Real ID seal will no longer be accepted. Real ID is a driver’s license or identification card that bears a special seal, which signifies that the bearer of the card has been screened and approved according to a standard set by the federal government, rather than just by the state issuing the license. In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. government realized that nearly all of the hijackers who boarded commercial planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a field in Shanksville, Penn., were carrying U.S. driver’s licenses and state IDs, and most of those documents had been obtained fraudulently. In the years that followed, the federal government began an effort to tighten national standards for state-issued documentation, and in 2005, Congress passed the Real ID Act. Story has more background.<br/>