Poll: Big majority favors airport scanners

PRINCETON, N.J., Jan. 11 (UPI) -- Seventy-eight percent of U.S. air travelers say they support using full body airport scanners, a poll released Monday indicates.

The results of the USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted Jan. 5-6, came in the wake of a Christmas Day terrorism episode aboard a U.S.-bound jetliner. Some 67 percent said they would not personally be uncomfortable in undergoing such a scan, Gallup pollsters said in a release.

Forty-eight percent indicated they would not be uncomfortable at all, while 29 percent said they are now more concerned about the safety of air travel than they were before Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly attempted to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear.

However, the pollsters found a gender gap in the assumed level of discomfort, with female travelers more likely than male travelers to express discomfort (41 percent to 26 percent), while a majority of male air travelers say they would not be uncomfortable at all.

The survey included interviews with 542 "regular" air travelers -- those who have taken two or more air trips in the past 12 months -- and a total of 2,017 adults. The margin error for the regular travelers was 0.5 percentage points, with an overall error margin of 3 percentage points.