Aviation securityGermany says "nein" to full-body scanners
Germany has decided against deploying full-body scanners at German airports; after a 10-month trial, in which 1,280,000 passengers were scanned, the government said that the false alarm rate was just too high
After trials which lasted ten month, the German government has decided against deploying full-body scanners at German airports.
The German Interior Ministry said that “the technology is not mature enough for the available equipment to be used in practice” and that it will therefore not be installed at the county’s airports “for the time being.”
The ministry spokesperson said that the agencies responsible for airport security were leaning toward supporting the use of body scanners to “improve efficiency and effectiveness of air transport security checks,” but that the trials showed that there were “too many” false alarms.
FlightGlobal quotes sources in the German federal police as saying that the false alarm rate was “significantly higher than 50 percent.”
There were also concerns about the health effects of backscatter X-ray scanners, so the system tested used millimeter wave technology.
The test was conducted at the Hamburg Airport from September 2010 to July 2011, and involved scanning 1,289,000 passengers.
