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Japan

Missing Scissors Cause 36 Flight Cancellations In Japan (theregister.com) 166

Posted by BeauHD from the real-world-problems dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Thirty-six flights were cancelled at Japan's New Chitose airport on Saturday after a pair of scissors went missing. Japanese media report that retail outlets at the airport -- which serves the regional city of Chitose on Japan's northernmost island, Hokkaido -- are required to store scissors in a locker. When staff need to cut something, they withdraw the scissors and then replace them after they're done snipping. But last Saturday, an unnamed retailer at the airport was unable to find a pair of scissors. A lengthy search ensued, during which security checks for incoming passengers were paused for at least two hours.

Chaos ensued as queues expanded, passengers were denied entry, and airport authorities scrambled to determine whether the scissors had been swiped by somebody with malicious intent. The incident saw over 200 flights delayed, and 36 cancelled altogether. The mess meant some artists didn't appear at a music festival. Happily, the scissors were eventually found -- in the very same shop from which they had gone missing, and not in the hands of someone nefarious. But it took time for authorities to verify the scissors were the missing cutters and not another misplaced pair.
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Missing Scissors Cause 36 Flight Cancellations In Japan More

Missing Scissors Cause 36 Flight Cancellations In Japan

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  • Hopeless (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @09:03AM (#64723366)
    When a missing pair of scissors shuts an airport down, perhaps there should never be scissors in the airport.

    After all, every hijacking and other incident has been because of scissors, amirite?

    • Re:Hopeless (Score:5, Insightful)

      by coofercat ( 719737 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @09:25AM (#64723434) Homepage Journal

      In the UK at least, you're allowed scissors up to a certain size - so little kids paper scissors, nail scissors etc are all okay - you've just to to show them to the security people as you pass through.

      If their staff need anything bigger than this, you've got to wonder what the hell are they doing with them? How necessary is that activity air-side?

      If it is really necessary, then chain them to the inside of the locker. Employee takes 'thing' to the locker, obtains scissors, snips whatever massive thing they need to do, then closes locker - scissors can't be taken away, even if the locker is left open. This all seems like a supremely solvable problem.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by NMBob ( 772954 )
      Less. Boxcutters.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cob666 ( 656740 )
      Why don't they just require that shops inside the actual airport use those kid friendly scissors that are barely sharp and have big blunt rounded ends. Solves pretty much every scissor related security issue that could come up in an airport, I think.

      • Why don't they just require that shops inside the actual airport use those kid friendly scissors

        They will in the future.

        The way governments work is by responding to events. They don't think ahead and take preventative action.

    • Just use preschool safety scissors....

    • Re:Hopeless (Score:5, Interesting)

      by znrt ( 2424692 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @09:33AM (#64723472)

      the 9/11 hijackers used boxcutters to successfully take over several planes, and airport security changed forever.

      the scissors were actually found the same day, but they wanted to make absolutely sure that those were indeed the same scissors. japanese are extremely rigourous with any protocol, they can go bsod simply because you ask for something that's not on the menu, let alone and in a potentially hazardous situation. if anything had happened because of those scissors the failing and guilt of everyone involved would have been utterly crushing, so nobody would dare to just turn a blind eye. cancelling 30 flights and delaying another 200 was nothing, and the right thing to do in their mindset.

      • Re:Hopeless (Score:5, Insightful)

        by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @09:49AM (#64723530) Homepage

        the 9/11 hijackers used boxcutters to successfully take over several planes, and airport security changed forever.

        And that hijacking technique will never work again.

        Up until 9/11, hijacking an airplane was assumed to result in an unplanned stop in Cuba, and the advice to passengers was go along and nobody will get hurt; your trip just gets delayed a little. After 9/11, any attempt at hijacking an airplane would mean that every single passenger will fight the hijackers.

        (not to mention that the doors to the cockpit are now locked and reinforced).

        • And that hijacking technique will never work again.

          The TSA fails at least 70% of the time [cntraveler.com] to find test weapons put through airport screenings. I can guarantee you there are people on planes right now carrying box cutters, scissors, or other such items, either intentionally or unintentionally.

          • And that hijacking technique will never work again. The TSA fails at least 70% of the time [cntraveler.com] to find test weapons put through airport screenings. I can guarantee you there are people on planes right now carrying box cutters, scissors, or other such items, either intentionally or unintentionally.

            And that hijacking technique will never work again.

            Up until 9/11, hijacking an airplane was assumed to result in an unplanned stop in Cuba, and the advice to passengers was go along and nobody will get hurt; your trip just gets delayed a little. After 9/11, any attempt at hijacking an airplane would mean that every single passenger will fight the hijackers.

            (not to mention that the doors to the cockpit are now locked and reinforced).

        • any attempt at hijacking an airplane would mean that every single passenger will fight the hijackers.
          You think to much bravery into people.

          Most people wont fight. Some perhaps will pray, and the two who fight get killed.

          So ... Flight passengers are not Viking Warriors.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by XXongo ( 3986865 )

            any attempt at hijacking an airplane would mean that every single passenger will fight the hijackers. You think to much bravery into people. Most people wont fight. Some perhaps will pray, and the two who fight get killed. So ... Flight passengers are not Viking Warriors.

            United Airlines Flight 93 shows that you are incorrect in this assumption.

          • any attempt at hijacking an airplane would mean that every single passenger will fight the hijackers.
            You think to much bravery into people.

            Most people wont fight. Some perhaps will pray, and the two who fight get killed.

            So ... Flight passengers are not Viking Warriors.

            You owe it to yourself to take a trip: https://www.nps.gov/flni [nps.gov]
            That hijacking technique didn't even last an hour after its first success.

            The plane was 42 minutes behind schedule when it left the runway at 08:42. The hijackers' decision to wait an additional 46 minutes to launch their assault meant that the people being held hostage on the flight very quickly learned that suicide attacks had already been made by hijacked airliners on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City as well as the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, near D.C. By 9:57 a.m., only 29 minutes after the plane had been hijacked, the passengers had made the decision to fight back in an effort to gain control of the aircraft.

      • the 9/11 hijackers used boxcutters to successfully take over several planes

        This points to a culture fail. These things are designed to break apart. The depth to which they can cut is stupidly shallow. They're unweidly. By design.

        Yet nobody opted to simply take them away from the rabid lunatics for fear of a few shallow stabs? Really?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *

          These things are designed to break apart.

          Depends on the type of boxcutter. Most of the ones I've used don't. Consider, for instance, something like this utility knife [amzn.to], or these single-edge razor box cutters [amzn.to].

          I used to carry something like the latter on my keychain back when I was working for Best Buy and frequently needed to open boxes...flew with it in my pocket (pre-9/11) and only caught any grief over it at SFO (still got through security after less than a minute of arguing with the guard that I'd flo

        • Yet nobody opted to simply take them away from the rabid lunatics for fear of a few shallow stabs? Really?
          They used Steward(esses) as hostages and had the cutters on their throat.
          Get a book about Anatomy.

          There are plenty of places on the body where a box curter can hit an artery and you are dead in 10 to 30 seconds: with out any option to help you.

      • Clearly they needed to use blockchain to identify the scissors immediately upon discovery to save time.

      • A friend of mine exported a Iaii-To (Japanese practicing sword) from Japan to France. That is a blunt Japanese sword (Katana) used for Iaii-Do, the art of sword drawing.
        Historical swords are forbidden to be exported without prior permit. Such training sword of course is not historical and usually made from an aluminium magnesium alloy, has nothing to do with a real sword.

        To be better save than sorry, he declared the export when he was through security. Because of that: it took ages ... the flight was delaye

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )

      Simple way to avoid this: unlike boxcutters, scissors generally have molded rings for fingers. Simply run an anti-theft cable through them such that you can't remove them more than six feet from the locker! For bonus points, you can attach them to a place near where they are actually used, rather than making a trip to a locker in the back of the sub-building, and then having to bring them back.

      (Yes, I know this far from perfect. I'm sure it would be no fun use scissors with a cable through the finger hole

      • Considering that a significant amount of time was lost confirming they were the same scissors once found, the time and expense of serializing them with laser engraving is worth it.

        Welding an anti-theft cable to the shaft just past the handle would also work. At a certain point, it will be cheaper to buy scissors that are already made with a security attachment built in. But comfort is probably not too important if they're used so rarely and are kept in a locker most of the time.

        • This seems to be one place where not only serializing them via identification numbers but adding some sort of beaconing (via bluetooth or NFC) would be useful, both as an aid to finding them if misplaced, but also tracking them if they actually were stolen.

          Normally, if you make them trackable, you then create a sitiuation where an attacker can rapidly identify where they are, but if they live in a locker normally anyways...

          Regarding the anti-theft cable, instead of chaining it to a fixed attachment point, y

          • I enjoy all discussions of problem-solving.

            But also this entire thread is the perfect piece of evidence for the scene where the young John Connor says to Terminator Arnold: "We're not going to make it, are we? Humans, I mean."

    • I would say that the same ninjas that could wreak havoc with a pair of scissors would also likely bring their own tools.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      You were going for funny, right? Or maybe you can explain where the moderators found the "interesting insight"?

    • After all, every hijacking and other incident has been because of scissors, amirite?
      Yes, and that is why they shut the flights down to figure where they are.
      That is not rocket science.

      When a missing pair of scissors shuts an airport down, perhaps there should never be scissors in the airport.

      Then you do not have scissors when you need them ...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mspohr ( 589790 )

      When scissors are banned, only criminals will have scissors.
      Protect our right to carry scissors!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by eepok ( 545733 )

      After all, every hijacking and other incident has been because of scissors, amirite?

      This rhetorical question is intended to imply that since scissors HAVEN'T been used as a weapon in a hijacking, that there should be no concern for people bringing scissors onboard. It's also extremely reductive and obtuse.

      The concern isn't for someone "having scissors". The risk is that someone could have a hard stabbing or slicing object that could be used as a weapon. Many scissors have both a sharp edge and a pointy tip, thereby meeting both standards for a weapon. Moreover, a pair of such scissors can

  • The reason for concern (Score:3)

    by DirkDaring ( 91233 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @09:14AM (#64723394)

    If someone did grab them, and they were late for their flight, they could have been running through the airport with them and we can't have that.

    • Running with scissors in an airport is especially dangerous. After a series of comic mishaps, you might fall on them at gate and, as you bleed out, make an impassioned speech telling them how much you love them and how much you've always loved them and asking them please not to leave and just please don't ever leave you ever again.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      these shops are past the security check, so could easily get on board of the plane.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by flink ( 18449 )

        Thus resulting in the unsanctioned creation of a set of paper doll onboard an aircraft. Or perhaps, heaven forbid, a snowflake.

  • Japan takes safety seriously. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Revek ( 133289 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @09:19AM (#64723412)
    I don't know if the Japanese should be commended or ridiculed for such a reaction.

    The only thing I can compare it to both involve working in the containment building of a nuclear plant. Two incidents both involving lost items. One was a sharpie and the other a piece of cellophane wrap. Both occurred near the moonpool of a nuke with the core basket removed in preparation for a fuel shuffle. One took 12 hours to resolve and the other nearly a day. In both cases the job came to a halt while the missing items were found. The guy who dropped the cellophane insisted that it went in the moonpool but it was later found two floors down. The other guy who lost the sharpie spent a miserable 12 hours in the containment building since they wouldn't let him check out without the sharpie which was marked as contaminated.

    • Re:Japan takes safety seriously. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @10:00AM (#64723572) Homepage Journal

      I don't know if the Japanese should be commended or ridiculed for such a reaction.

      The answer is ridiculed, of course. There is no reason to hold up security checks for missing scissors. It wasn't a missing bomb.

      • There is no reason to hold up security checks for missing scissors.

        They didn't hold up security checks for missing scissors. They held up security checks to stop more people entering a secure area while an active security breach is being investigated, that is standard operating practice at every airport. It's also quite standard to not let people enter the secure area if all flights are on hold which they were since keeping people in the check-in area means they are not filling the terminal while also being right where they most likely need to be anyway (close to a checkin

        • They held up security checks to stop more people entering a secure area while an active security breach is being investigated

          People misplace stuff. Until they had actual reason to believe there was a security breach, there was not a good reason to act as if there had been a security breach.

    • Are you familiar with Japanese scissors? They are really really sharp.
    • In this case I side with: ridiculed. Does a hijacking or another action of bad faith depend on a pair of scissors from a shop? I doubt it. There are far more useful tools than scissors. And there are ways to get them onto an airport.
      So the whole cost of this risk mitigation, including this false positive, is far worse than the cost of what it is mitigating.

      Reminds me of that case where a team wrote a piece of software in a couple of months. That software automated 4 hours of relatively simple and easily

      • The time to mitigate problems with a procedure is after the incident. There are too many people involved to deviate from a pre-agreed plan. I assume especially so in Japan's culture.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Exactly you can obtain everything you need inside the security zone:
        https://terminalcornucopia.com... [terminalcornucopia.com]

        What prevents another 9/11 is the attackers know it wont work. 2-man protocols in the cockpits, locked re-enforced doors (and policies to keep them locked no matter what is happening in passenger cabin), no-nonsense Air Marshals, and passengers that are no longer predisposed to passivity.

        In short we devalued jacking airliners as a target. You might be able to murder a bunch of your fellow passengers but the

        • I still feel bad for the pilots though. Even if you know that another 9//11 won't happen, it still doesn't hide the screams of the passengers that get cut up outside your door. I still say a sealed pilot door is necessary but on the same side I think insurance should give much more in that case.

        • > passengers that are no longer predisposed to
          > passivity.

          Yup. There are multiple documented incidents of people trying to breach cockpit doors and the other passengers not just intervening, but literally beating (or sometimes choking) the would-be hijackers to death for their troubles. Another 9/11 is just not going to happen. And it's not because of the TSA or any other variant of the airportsecuritygoons. You could pack that whole useless lot up to Fargo and feed them through the wood chipper a

      • I find myself reminded here of an experience I had at a conference a while back. At some point during COVID, the Moscone Center got a big stick up its ass about "security" and now has "weapon detectors" (Not metal detectors, mind you. These were specifically billed as WEAPON detectors.) to enter. And when I passed through, the door goons yelled at me, made me step out of line, and gave me a ration of grief about the laptop in my backpack. Yes... these dim bulbs objected to my laptop going into a tech co

    • The only thing I can compare it to both involve working in the containment building of a nuclear plant. Two incidents both involving lost items.

      Then the answer to your question has to be ridiculed because they are clearly so focussed of irrelevant details like this that they are missing major issues, like lack of robust emergency power, that led to the events at Fukushima. Plus, locking someone in a containment building for 12 hours is not the what you do if you actually care about safety, having someone that fatigued and desperate running around a nuclear reactor is a much bigger safety risk than one missing pen. This is what happens when you pri

    • I don't know if the Japanese should be commended or ridiculed for such a reaction.

      The only thing I can compare it to both involve working in the containment building of a nuclear plant. Two incidents both involving lost items. One was a sharpie and the other a piece of cellophane wrap. Both occurred near the moonpool of a nuke with the core basket removed in preparation for a fuel shuffle. One took 12 hours to resolve and the other nearly a day. In both cases the job came to a halt while the missing items were found. The guy who dropped the cellophane insisted that it went in the moonpool but it was later found two floors down. The other guy who lost the sharpie spent a miserable 12 hours in the containment building since they wouldn't let him check out without the sharpie which was marked as contaminated.

      I think a bit of ridicule for a couple of reasons.

      First, if something like a missing set of scissors is that big a deal then you need something more robust than a locker to replace them. Like literally have a security guard escort the scissors (and other prohibited items) around the secure area when needed. Or if there's a bunch of stuff like that (knives for cooking in the restaurants) then set up a secured work area where shops can prep items then take them out through a metal detector.

      Second, the first h

  • Put serial numbers, and probably a hologram, on all the scissors in the airport so they can be verified as being the correct ones when they are found out of place. Should probably be made nationwide.
    • RFID chips. This isn't hard just costly. I am sure the taxpayers will love it.

      • At least randomized serial numbers can't easily be duplicated while it's sitting in a locker. With RFID you would have to do active tags at a higher cost because passive tags can be copied. And unless it's molded inside the scissor handle, you can just peel an active tag off.

        The goal with serialization is to make sure it's the same pair of scissors, not to prevent spoofing them. But if they can be easily spoofed, that will create doubt when you find the "real" ones.

        And then you wouldn't be able to visual

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • will anyone be held responsible after all of that real-world disruption? will anyone pay for missed events and missed opportunities?

    or does life go one with a mere shrug?

    • Did Crowdstrike pay much?

      Security has a real-world cost. Sometimes that's an unexpected chain of events that compounds itself. Since nobody expected a pair of scissors to get misplaced so easily, the problem was already considered solved until this happened. The only thing you can do is plan better for next time. If you chased down every Murphy's Law eventuality your rule book would be 10x thicker and you'd take years to implement anything.

  • But we still call ourselves a 'civilized society.' Even though we live in fear of 1/30 of that society. (yes I pulled that fraction out of my ass)

    We are so civil that we won't do anything about living in that constant fear.

    • There are generally two kinds of people:
      1) Those who generally trust those around and work for the general good but put safeguards in place to mitigate the actions of the few.
      2) Those who base their actions on fear primarily and work toward their own (family's) safety first, while constantly talking about how dangerous this or that is and what's going to happen if they aren't properly protected or able to protect themselves.

      Japan is mostly the first one. But the differences in the two points of view are th

  • We're done.

  • There's lots of paper in airports, and not many rocks.

  • Let's cut to the chase, as there is on other way to slice it. I'm going to trim this down into a short clip. This is shear madness! Scissors are the Crowdstrike of the airline industry.

  • At some point they'll also realize that chopsticks are dangerous, pointy sticks.

  • Clearly, rational risk-management has left the building when such a response ensues. I remember some research for a decade ago or so on how to get edged weapons into a plane or _make_ one on the plane. Not that difficult. Hence a pair of scissors is at best a minor risk, if that.

  • I feel like whatever they're having to cut, could be cut by the children's scissors that are mostly plastic, with just the little sliver of metal along the edge that cuts. No pointy dangerous end. Why, oh why, wouldn't they have put safe scissors in the airports???? This is so insane, that I believe it.

    • I am not very familiar with retail in Japanese airports. However, many consumer goods come in hard-to-open packaging that requires scissors. I assume that these are for the case where somebody buys something (like maybe a new electric toothbrush) that requires scissors in order to get them out of the packaging. Anybody who buys such things in an airport fort twice the normal retail price probably wants to use them immediately. I am used to Amazon and frustration-free packaging. The stuff you get at Cos

  • No Running!!!

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