Here’s Where You Can Fly With A Digital ID On Your Phone

Where can you fly in the U.S. with a mobile ID stored on your phone? For tens of millions of eligible Americans, the answer is: Dozens of destinations, and the list is growing. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is currently accepting digital driver’s licenses at 27 airports across the country (including one in Puerto Rico).

While paperless boarding passes have been around for nearly two decades, the TSA and individual states are playing catch-up in issuing mobile identification. The agency began testing digital ID acceptance at select checkpoints in early 2022.

On Thursday, Louisiana became the eighth state to have mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs) accepted at TSA checkpoints with digital ID readers nationwide. Louisianans who download the state’s LA Wallet app to their smart phones can now use it for identity verification during the screening process in lieu of handing over a physical photo ID and boarding pass to the TSA security officer at the entry to the checkpoint.

“Travelers who are early adopters of new technologies or are intrigued with this capability will find the mDL to be a convenient option when going through the security process,” says Arden Hudson, TSA’s Federal Security Director for the State of Louisiana.

Will The TSA Accept Your Digital Driver’s License?

The first thing travelers should know is that not any digital driver’s license works; it must be compliant with TSA technology. It’s not as simple as storing a mobile version of your physical driver’s license in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet and heading to the airport.

While nearly a dozen states now issue digital driver’s licenses or mobile IDs, only seven states besides Louisiana issue IDs that are interoperable with TSA technology.

In March 2022, Arizona teamed up with Apple to become the first state to deploy a new technology that allows passengers to use their state-issued mobile driver’s license or mobile identification card in Apple Wallet to verify their identity for airport security screening purposes. Since then, Colorado, Maryland, and Georgia have since joined Arizona. (All four states also allow storage in a Google Wallet.)

The TSA also began accepting mobile IDs from Utah in March 2023, Iowa in October 2023 and California in December 2023.

How To Fly With A Digital Driver’s License

To use a digital driver’s license at a TSA checkpoint, your flight must be departing from one of more than two dozen U.S. airports with the agency’s Credential Authentication Technology (CAT-2) is available at security checkpoints.

Instead of presenting a physical driver’s license to the TSA officer, you would scan your mobile ID with the CAT-2 reader to validate your identity. (CAT-2 readers can also scan REAL ID-compliant physical driver licenses.) These devices snap a real-time picture of you and compare it with your digital ID using facial recognition technology. Through a secure internet connection to TSA’s Secure Flight system, the units are also able to verify that you are ticketed for air travel that day, so there’s no need to show a boarding pass to the TSA officer. After the transaction, “your photo and biographic information will be deleted from these devices,” according to the TSA website.

This is not to be confused with TSA PreCheck, a separate paid, expedited screening program available at roughly 200 airports across the country where travelers are pre-screened for their security risk. TSA PreCheck uses biometrics to verify a passenger’s identity during the enrollment process.