KEN SAKAMOTO / KSAKAMOTO@STARBULLETIN.COM
State Department of Transportation spokeswoman
Marilyn Kali showed off a knife, one of the confiscated
items taken from passengers at security checkpoints
at Honolulu Airport, yesterday.

Collection of banned
items grows at airport

Confiscations are running
70% above normal

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By Lisa Asato
lasato@starbulletin.com

More than 1,500 contraband items have been confiscated from ticketed passengers at Honolulu Airport since last week's terrorist attacks.

That's 70 percent more than normal, said Joe Guyton, the airport's airline security coordinator. Items include an ice pick, a sheathed Japanese dagger, a spent .50-caliber machine gun shell being used as a paperweight, a hammer, gun-shape cigarette lighters, cuticle removers and brass knuckles.

Nationwide, increased airline security is the result of a new Federal Aviation Administration ban on "knives or cutting instruments of any size or material" from the aircraft cabin. Airlines will no longer provide steak knives for on-board food service.

KEN SAKAMOTO / KSAKAMOTO@STARBULLETIN.COM
Among the items confiscated from airline passengers
since new security measures took effect are these
lighters shaped as pistols. Sharp objects or anything
that looks like an explosive or a gun are no
longer allowed on airplanes.

"We're not allowing any sharp objects or anything that has an appearance of an explosive or a gun," said Marilyn Kali, state Department of Transportation spokeswoman. "Before, we used to allow knives with blades smaller than 4 inches. No longer."

In the last week, security confiscated 140 knives of various sorts, including butter knives, pocket knives and kitchen knives. Scissors, numbering 837, were the most common contraband.

Kali said reducing the number of potentially threatening items in the cabin, even toy guns that could be perceived as real, is important to give passengers and crew "a level of comfort and safety."

Standing near a display of items that also included a shaving kit and box cutters with .5-inch blades, Kali advised: "If you need to take these things with you, you need to take it in checked baggage, not carry-on. Declare it to the airline when you're checking in so when they X-ray it they know it's in there."

Guyton said all carry-on luggage must pass through X-ray machines and/or be searched by security. All the seized objects were taken from carry-on luggage at security checkpoints leading to the gates.

"Probably nine out of 10 people are totally innocent," Guyton said. But people should be aware that things they could carry on before are no longer allowed, he said.

Picking up a confiscated can opener, Guyton said: "I don't think we'll ever go back where this will be allowed on our aircraft. Those days are gone."