36 canceled flights Disappeared scissors plunge an airport into chaos
Over the weekend, 36 flights were canceled and 201 delayed at a Japanese airport after a pair of scissors went missing from a store near the gates.
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- A pair of scissors is to blame for bringing an airport in Japan to a standstill at the weekend.
- They disappeared from a store near the gates for domestic flights.
- For safety reasons, 36 flights were canceled and 201 were delayed.
- The scissors finally reappeared the next day - in the same store.
New Chitose Airport is an important transportation hub in Japan. It serves the second busiest domestic flight route in the world - between Tokyo and Sapporo. So it's always busy there. But last Saturday, nothing worked at all.
Security checks at the domestic terminal were suspended for around two hours, leaving hundreds of travelers temporarily stranded, reports theBBC. There were bottlenecks and queues. 36 flights were canceled and 201 were delayed. The reason: a pair of missing scissors.
They were lost in a store near the gates - an incident that could also be linked to hijacking or terrorism. For security reasons, domestic flight operations were suspended and a feverish search began. In vain. Flights were eventually resumed anyway.
It was not until the next day that the scissors reappeared in the same store where they had been lost. Hokkaido Airport, the operator of New Chitose Airport, announced that an employee had found them.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has asked Hokkaido Airport to investigate the cause in order to prevent such a situation in the future. "We are aware that the incident was due to an inadequate storage and management system in the store," the airport admitted. It will ensure "strong management awareness" in the future.
