Following Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabs' abortive attempt to murder hundreds of people by exploding his underwear a few days ago the news has been dominated by stories about airport security.

I have been slightly concerned about some of the reports that have "talked up" the increased use of full body scanners.

I have no problems at all with the use of this equipment, although I understand why some people may worry about the intrusive nature of the scan.

Rather I question the immediate practicality of the scanner:

To explain, reports indicate that it takes between 15 seconds and 2 minutes to scan each passenger.

Doing some quick maths one can see that unless there are a large number of scanners used at the hub airports then the check in time is going to increase enormously.

A fully loaded A380 Airbus, in it's usual configuration, carries 525 people - assuming it takes a minute to scan each passenger that equates to nearly 9 hours of scanning time - & that it for just 1 aircraft.

Also this is additional security - there will still be the usual procedures.

Multiply that by the number of flights on high risk routes then one can envisage real problems unless there is a massive investment in large numbers of scanners which apparently cost about $200,000 each.

The Israeli airline EL AL has operated with enhanced security checks for years and has had a much longer check in time than other airlines.

I guess this has been manageable on a small airline with a small number of flights but expand that to every airline on, say the transatlantic routes, then the possible scale of the problem becomes apparent.

The cost of the equipment will, inevitably, eventually fall to the passenger with increased fares, increased airport taxes or both.

Given this one can understand why terrorists favour the type of attack that "failed" the other day.

Even if the bomb doesn't work there is still a massive financial effect on airports, airlines and the overall world economy.