Why a Missing Pair of Scissors Caused Dozens of Cancellations at One Airport

Travelers flying out of Japan’s New Chitose Airport on Hokkaido last Saturday were greeted with delays and cancellations, and some were forced to retake security checks, because of a missing pair of scissors.

According to reports, a store near one of the airport’s boarding gates reported a missing pair of scissors to airport authorities, who then suspended security checks at its domestic terminal for about two hours. Some passengers already in the departure lounge were forced to double back through security, creating huge bottlenecks and long lines as officials searched for the missing scissors.

Authorities were unable to track down the scissors until Monday, but gave the green light for flights to resume later on Saturday. The scissors were eventually found by a worker at the same store who reported them missing.

In total, 26 flights were canceled and a couple of hundred more were delayed because of the incident, according to the BBC.

A spokesperson for the airport told media that while it recognized that a simple storage and management mistake caused the issues, it’s something that could be linked to “hijacking or terrorism,” so it opted to effectively shut the airport down for a couple of hours.

The airport is one of just six 24-hour airports in Japan and one of the top 50 airports in the world according to Skytrax, a U.K.-based airport review company. It’s typically one of the top 5 busiest airports in Japan, too, with 25 million passengers annually traveling through it.