Fmr. CEO of American Airlines Calls Full-Body Scanners in Airports a 'Waste of Resources'
Fox News January 07, 2010
.....
"I think the real issue is this. Most of the people that go through security don't need a full body scan.
Certainly, if we had a trusted traveler program, where people had been with a — had been — gotten a thorough examination, a background check before they got to the airport, we don't need to put those people through a body scanner.
What we need to do is, we need to differentiate between those people who are a risk and those people who are unlikely to be a risk. Let's put the high-risk people through the body scanners. That — now we will have enough body scanners, and, in fact, we will have enough much more expensive body scanners.
You know, a body scanner is about $150,000. An X-ray machine is about $10,000. You're not going to use — you cannot useful full body scanning on everything. And doing so is silly. It's just a waste of resources and a waste of money.
If you look what the Israelis do, the Israelis use layered security, four or five layers of security, all of it focused on the people, not on the things. And they use technology. For example, if they see a bag that might have a bomb in it, they put it in a bomb box.
If in fact they spot a bag at the ticket counter that might have a bomb in it, they're encapsulated within an area. They don't have to evacuate the whole terminal, the way we did at Newark the other day."