When we flew to Vietnam via Hong Kong last year, my wife and I just took carry-on. I hate to go without a pocket knife, but that wasn’t possible, so after carefully reading the latest rules I settled on a small pair of Tullen shears (actually harder to use as a weapon than most scissors) and my wife had a cheap little pair of Chinese folding scissors. The Tullens I had picked up at a garage sale for $1.00, so I was quite prepared to lose them.
Security at Toronto picked up on the Tullens and asked to look at them. The boss measured the blade length (they have a small ruler on the side of their ID tags for the purpose), said “Cool”, and waved us on. I don’t know if they even spotted my wife’s scissors. So I was pretty pleased with myself. There was also no problem on the Hong Kong/Vietnam or the Cambodia/Hong Kong legs of the trip.
At the Hong Kong airport coming back, however, the security guy reacted with a mixture of delight and horror. No, there was no way I could board with anything sharp, and both scissors were confiscated. They also carefully inspected the nail clippers in my wife’s backpack, but I had cunningly brought a pair that didn’t have the folding nail file, so they grudgingly allowed it.
From that experience, and from what I have read, the application of the rules is completely arbitrary, and needless to say there is no appeal. You will probably get away with scissors, but don’t take any you can’t bear to lose.
