[HN Gopher] Osaka: Kansai Airport proud to have never lost singl...
___________________________________________________________________
Osaka: Kansai Airport proud to have never lost single piece of
luggage (2024)
Author : thunderbong
Score : 194 points
Date : 2026-02-24 16:40 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (japannews.yomiuri.co.jp)
(TXT) w3m dump (japannews.yomiuri.co.jp)
| aapoalas wrote:
| I have very fond memories of Kansai airport. First time I went to
| Japan I ... Uhh, I didn't have a visa despite going there for
| exchange.
|
| The Kansai airport immigration office uttered a lot of "oohs" and
| "eehs", but they came through and in less than 45 minutes my
| appeal for deportation was accepted and I was granted a 1 year
| student visa. Always makes me happy when I pass through there :)
| kylecazar wrote:
| You showed up in Japan intending to stay for a year without a
| visa? Bold strategy :)
| aapoalas wrote:
| I may have not properly read the paper that said "This is not
| a visa, you should apply for a visa using this paper"...
| unscaled wrote:
| You probably had a CoE (Certificate of Eligibility to
| Reside in Japan, Zai Liu Zi Ge Ren Ding Zheng Ming Shu ).
| This piece of paper needs to be taken to your local embassy
| or consulate and be converted to a visa there, which then
| gets stamped on your passport.
|
| But Japan is working quite differently from other countries
| here, so you're probably not the first person to be
| confused, although I don't think any country issues a long-
| term visa that is not stamped on your passport.
| dathinab wrote:
| Bold strategy :)
|
| I don't think this was their "strategy", but more like a
| "young people are sometimes clueless and fail to take care of
| necessary things with enough buffer ahead of time"
| situations.
|
| And that (student + exchange program + in general eligible
| for a visa) is why it turned out well. Not sure if it still
| would do so today. The "cheap yen" tourism boom might have
| brought in money, but also a lot of annoyance with unpleasant
| tourists amplified by how modern recommendation algorithms
| work (you see all the rage bait "a tourist behaved mean" and
| non "normal tourist is polite and does nothing strange") and
| various propaganda amplifying this. In general there seem to
| be a ton of "make cities look way worse wrt. safety and
| cleanliness and blame it on tourists/immigrants/minorities"
| videos across most western countries in recent times (not
| just JP, e.g. London has a lot of such nonsense, it's quite
| safe, but if you ask ticktock it's a lawless crime zone. ).
| protonbob wrote:
| > Theft From the Person offences have a crime rate of 8.21
| reports per 1,000 people in London, which is 4.69 times the
| national average. This figure is calculated from 87,224
| crime reports logged by Metropolitan Police during the
| 12-month period ending November 2025.
|
| https://crimerate.co.uk/london
|
| That is more than Chicago.
|
| > In June 2025, there were 631 reported incidents (23.2 per
| 100,000) - a 49% reduction from the August 2023 peak.
|
| https://counciloncj.org/crime-in-chicago-what-you-need-to-
| kn...
| dhosek wrote:
| I feel like this is a challenge to me now. I will fly to and from
| your airport and you will lose my bag.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| or at least i don't want to see the goddamn handle, let me
| awkwardly turn my suitcase first!
| recursive wrote:
| > Lost baggage is when a passenger's baggage is lost or goes
| missing due to an error _on the part of the airport_.
| EuanReid wrote:
| Headline's a bit misleading. They've never _permanently_ lost a
| bag, and well done to them for that, but they 've certainly lost
| them for periods of time. Just eventually found them.
| ghaff wrote:
| Permanent losses are pretty uncommon in general. Good for them
| for minimizing but having bags on the next flight or delayed
| for a couple/three days is _way_ more common. Probably would
| have to be stolen which is rare, especially in Japan, I assume
| or end up in some weird location without a scan.
|
| Was flying into Narita once and I had checked luggage in part
| because I was carrying an award for a Japanese customer. I was
| sort of given a "we'll get back to you sooner or later." At
| which point I explained the situation to a supervisor I think
| and was much fluttering around and got the bag the next day.
| bombcar wrote:
| Most of the "permanent losses" are because the passenger
| gives up or doesn't care terribly much - hence all the
| luggage at the airline outlet stores.
|
| Most airlines do eventually find the bag, and if you kept in
| touch they'll _usually_ even get it to where you are, even if
| you 've since returned.
| ghaff wrote:
| I honestly have no idea how those dynamics work. At some
| point, the airline presumably pays, travel insurance does,
| or a combination of the two. At some point if it's just a
| bunch of old travel stuff, I guess I can see a customer
| shrugging, collecting the money, and dropping the whole
| thing.
| notahacker wrote:
| I'm now imagining a situation in which a customer at the
| point of successfully making an insurance claim to pay
| for the nice new clothes they've bought themselves is
| infuriated to receive an email informing them that Kansai
| airport has found their luggage and will endeavour to
| deliver it to a hotel anywhere within the world within
| two days...
| ghaff wrote:
| The customer has presumably been paid. If they're smart
| there's nothing or very little in the suitcase that can't
| just be replaced. The airline/insurance has paid out and
| just wants the claim to go away.
|
| As a side-note, had a small kitchen fire with smoke
| damage last year and it was pretty obvious that, even
| though they were reasonably generous, the insurance
| adjuster, cleaning people, movers, etc. just wanted the
| whole process to go away so they could move on. They
| objected a bit to a few claims but, for the most part,
| spending $50K was nothing compared to the claims being
| reopened.
| bombcar wrote:
| Once the insurance adjuster is satisfied that you're not
| scamming them, they're often quite flexible and lenient.
|
| I've only ever had luggage delayed once, they gave me a
| little bag of toiletries and a couple hundred bucks and a
| few days later delivered the luggage; never demanded the
| money back.
| ghaff wrote:
| I've had luggage delayed _many_ times relative to the
| amount I actually check luggage.
|
| There were a few insurance policy things that my adjuster
| pushed back on (no code upgrades) and there were a number
| of things that would have just been silly for me not to
| pay for when walls were being repaintedd and opened up.
| There was a fire inspector because of the size of the
| claim. But it was pretty reasonable overall--although of
| people wouldn't have had the available cash to do the
| whole job as it really needed o be done. And, given that
| a couple of contractors, saved my butt in the middle of
| the winter, I wasn't going to push back too hard.
| moufestaphio wrote:
| yeah, I've seen this being tossed around, but they definitely
| lost MY BAGS. Eventually I got them, but they were lost for 5
| days or so.
| ghaff wrote:
| And that's not a permanent loss. It may screw up your trip to
| a greater or lesser degree but I try to build in buffers at
| least for a shorter delay when I can. I have also had a few
| multi-day delays--on of which _just_ caught my guided hiking
| trip with like an hour to spare. And I had already bought a
| new duffle bag worth of stuff as best I could.
| moufestaphio wrote:
| I know it's not permanent. I'm just agreeing with OP that
| this is misleading.
| fsckboy wrote:
| the article does not discuss what you are saying, do you have
| an alternative source that tells this true story?
| snowhale wrote:
| the airport-as-island design probably helps more than people
| realize -- single terminal, no inter-terminal baggage transfers,
| and being purpose-built means the baggage sorter was designed
| into the infrastructure rather than bolted on later. most major
| airports lose bags on intra-airport transfers between terminals,
| not on flights. kansai just... doesn't have that problem by
| construction.
| teleforce wrote:
| >doesn't have that problem by construction.
|
| Thanks, going to borrow your words there for my civil
| engineering friends.
| jerlam wrote:
| Except Kansai has two terminals, but it's possible that each
| terminal's baggage processing is handled independently.
| gramie wrote:
| > doesn't have that problem by construction
|
| Well no, but it does have other significant construction
| problems! https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/japans-20b-kansai-
| airport...
| arvindkumarc wrote:
| How is this stat even useful?
| amiga386 wrote:
| It sets a verified lower bound on baggage loss. An achieveable
| ideal that other airports should aspire to.
|
| Lots of orgs claim to aspire to 5 nines of uptime but can
| barely manage 2 nines. Kansai airport with an average of about
| 17 million pax/yr [0] hasn't lost any luggage. Losing one item
| out of, say, 10 million items a year, would be _7_ nines.
|
| [0] https://www.kansai-airports.co.jp/en/business/in-figures/
| succo wrote:
| They lost mine! but they found it and brought it to me 2 days
| later at my door on the other side of Japan. Mind blowing
| efficiency
| Barbing wrote:
| I wonder with which companies they partner for those
| deliveries. Maybe they went with Japan's biggest courier or
| well, I'm sure they don't do it in house...
| sparkie wrote:
| My luggage was missing when I landed at KIX.
|
| But it wasn't the airport's fault - my luggage was still in
| Amsterdam.
|
| Arrived <24 hours later and they delivered it to my hotel in
| Osaka.
| ghaff wrote:
| In my experience, that's far and away the most common scenario.
| Luggage misses a connection, doesn't get on a flight that has
| ben changed because of weather, or otherwise ends up somewhere
| it's not supposed to be. Many airline tracking systems are
| better than they used to be but AirTags or equivalent are not a
| bad idea.
| lilytweed wrote:
| I once had SAS lose my luggage on a direct flight from
| Copenhagen to Tokyo Haneda. I was sure that such a thing was
| impossible, but I learned an important lesson that day.
| lysace wrote:
| I once flew with ANA to Tokyo/Haneda in First with a rewards-paid
| ticket for crazy cheap. When I got there and picked up my luggage
| there was a tag on it, asking me to go to some specific desk. I
| did. The luggage was a bit janky, but that happens.
|
| They very seriously apologized for breaking my bag. They asked me
| how much it had cost. I said "around $40, it was just something
| cheap". A minute later I was sort of ceremoniously handed an
| envelope with japanese yen notes worth that much.
| adrian_b wrote:
| In Europe, the airlines have broken my checked baggage about 3
| times, in places like Vienna, and those had been reasonably
| solid suitcases.
|
| Obviously, nobody ever offered a compensation.
|
| There is no wonder that such things happen, because at many
| airports I have seen how the baggage handlers throw the baggage
| through the air into the vehicles that carry the baggage to the
| airplanes, even over a distance of a few meters, instead of
| depositing it gently into the vehicle. Therefore I never put
| anything fragile in a checked baggage.
| jakub_g wrote:
| > In early December, a 35-year-old passenger from Tanzania was
| impressed to see that all the handles of the suitcases on the
| conveyor belt in the baggage claim area were facing the
| passengers.
|
| > After the luggage is unloaded and collected in the cargo
| handling area upon arrival at the airport, ground support
| personnel manually align the handles of the bags and place them
| on the conveyor belt.
|
| That's a level of attention to detail that we should be striving
| for in everything we build.
| afavour wrote:
| I think it also highlights something: better things are
| possible.
|
| Zero lost suitcases doesn't require magic to achieve. It just
| requires enough workers or enough time to make sure each worker
| is able to do their job successfully. Unfortunately financial
| and time constraints mean that very often there aren't enough
| workers or enough time, and some passengers suffer.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Oh why even mention time constraints, we all know damn well
| it's financial. Every corp on the face of the earth is
| constantly cost-cutting everything to the bone to justify
| more bonuses and higher executive compensation, while making
| sure the service or products provided are just barely good
| enough where people don't stage outright riots.
|
| In the sixties, the C-suite earned 21 times what the line
| worker did. In 2024 it's almost 300 times. So every single
| time you're dealing with a product that's been value-
| engineered to where it barely functions, or service people
| paid too little and empowered too little to actually help
| you, or stuck in a long ass line because they won't hire
| enough people, or stuck talking to some damn robot because
| people are expensive, it's beyond a safe bet that you have an
| executive or several to blame.
| rectang wrote:
| We should be spreading our cynicism over both management
| and customers. There is almost no level of service so
| terrible that people won't buy cheaper airline tickets. Let
| alone losing luggage, you could dial up the risk of death
| and people would still buy the cheaper tickets.
| afavour wrote:
| There's also something about the collapse in civility.
| Or... something. If you asked a plane full of passengers
| if they'd be happy to get their suitcase 5 minutes
| earlier even though it meant someone else lost theirs a
| lot of them would say yes.
| psadauskas wrote:
| I think we can lay the blame for this on the wealthy
| elites, too. When people see someone better off than them
| greedily destroying society for their own personal gain,
| they naturally think "well why not me, too?".
| bombcar wrote:
| We need shame, really, societal shame that we inflict on
| those who have to take government benefits, perhaps.
| Flying an airline that's known to treat their employees
| like shit should cause the people at the cocktail to look
| at you strange.
|
| (We kind of have something like this in that shopping at
| Costco is considered "good" but lots of people won't
| admit they shop at Walmart - I'm sure they'll be bankrupt
| soon given how many people _don 't_ shop there!)
| eudamoniac wrote:
| Not sure if this is sarcasm, but Walmart earnings
| continue to rise. Being embarrassed to shop at Walmart is
| largely a coastal elite bubble situation.
|
| For a more applicable example of shame, buying "cheap
| Chinese crap" is usually looked down on by all
| demographics or alignments.
| bombcar wrote:
| That was the joke, everyone (at least in the coastal
| elite) says they don't shop at Walmart, but they exist
| everywhere.
|
| Same with "cheap Chinese crap" - everyone decries it, but
| apparently everyone is also buying it.
| eudamoniac wrote:
| What I meant is that most people _do_ admit to shopping
| at Walmart with no embarrassment. Not the same for buying
| CCC. They still buy it but they know they shouldn 't.
| Shopping at Walmart isn't like that.
| ghaff wrote:
| Walmart is pretty much the only big discount store
| available to many people regardless of their income level
| unless they have personal shoppers picking stuff up for
| them. I have a nearby Walmart; the nearest Costco is an
| hour away and it's a different type of product mix
| anyway. I don't love shopping at Walmart for a number of
| reasons but it's convenient for many purposes.
| ahhhhnoooo wrote:
| > they exist everywhere...
|
| Not in Seattle. There are zero Walmarts in the city.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I mean, is that a consequence of people being innately,
| for it's own sake, cheap to a point of farce? Or is that
| a consequence of fifty years of stagnant wages?
|
| I'm sure it's a healthy blend of both, but IMO, if you
| want to see this actually change, the first thing to even
| make it tenable as a possibility is the owning classes
| _need to let some money flow down the hierarchy._ Like I
| 'm sure we'll always have our misers, our people who
| refuse to spend a penny more for anything, but I think
| the vast majority of the time what drives people to
| shitty retailers selling crap-quality products is that
| most people are fucking broke.
| rectang wrote:
| > _I mean, is that a consequence of people being
| innately, for it 's own sake, cheap to a point of farce?_
|
| Yes.
|
| The price-driven market segment will never disappear and
| is an emergent property of human nature and the dynamics
| of a marketplace where prices are instantly comparable.
|
| Plane tickets are way more affordable for nearly everyone
| than they used to be, but price competition is more
| savage than ever. The marketplace has spoken.
|
| While I agree that concentration of wealth at the top is
| a major problem, I don't think that shaking loose that
| wealth will change the price dynamics of the airline
| industry in the slightest.
| jama211 wrote:
| Well not every one on the face of this earth as that's
| where Kansai airport is located. It happens a lot in
| America and other places too but not everywhere
| gmd63 wrote:
| Also requires a culture of respect for the people who are
| handling baggage - an important thing lacking in parts of
| society in the US, where working fast food is used as a
| pejorative.
| observationist wrote:
| The culture bit is the most important. You could add 100x
| the current headcount at all American airports and because
| the workers simply don't give a shit about doing good work,
| because they're treating it as a 9 to 5, where they have to
| go and suffer through a meaningless 8 hours, or worse, they
| treat it like their own personal access to other people's
| stuff to loot at will.
|
| The TSA is security theater, a vast majority of American
| jobs seem to be competence theater. You only ever tend to
| see care and craft in small business and actual crafts.
| It's so rare that it's incredibly refreshing to find anyone
| in any business that bothers to do good work and take care
| of the small things.
|
| It's not about respecting the baggage handlers. It's about
| a culture where you respect yourself such that you are
| obliged to do the best work you can, whether it's baggage
| handling, being a CEO, or flipping burgers. Self respect
| and respect for the job far outweigh any notion of
| employers or other citizens respecting baggage handlers.
| They have sophisticated notions of status and face and
| place in society that are sadly absent in American culture.
|
| You could take the Kansai airport baggage handler team and
| drop them into any airline in the world, and they'd perform
| to the same high standard. Take any halfass United Airline
| baggage team and drop them at Kansai and they'd be breaking
| guitars, killing dogs, and all the other usual shenanigans
| just like back at home, and they wouldn't give a flying
| rat's behind about how their employer respects them or not.
| They're there for paychecks. Respect doesn't even enter
| into consideration.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > You could add 100x the current headcount at all
| American airports and because the workers simply don't
| give a shit about doing good work, because they're
| treating it as a 9 to 5, where they have to go and suffer
| through a meaningless 8 hours, or worse, they treat it
| like their own personal access to other people's stuff to
| loot at will.
|
| This places the blame solely on the workers. Their CEO
| earns a ludicrous multiple of their wage. They are
| treated like shit and are expendable. It's a two way
| street, treat workers with respect and and you might get
| some respect from them.
| gmd63 wrote:
| Yep. The reason employees don't care about their work is
| that caring for their work is not valued. Box checkers
| and opportunists proliferate as loyal craftsmen get
| screwed over repeatedly.
|
| > You could take the Kansai airport baggage handler team
| and drop them into any airline in the world, and they'd
| perform to the same high standard. Take any halfass
| United Airline baggage team and drop them at Kansai and
| they'd be breaking guitars, killing dogs, and all the
| other usual shenanigans just like back at home, and they
| wouldn't give a flying rat's behind about how their
| employer respects them or not. They're there for
| paychecks. Respect doesn't even enter into consideration.
|
| The hypothetical of dropping one baggage team into
| another airport might be true in an immediate timeframe
| but it doesn't address the core issue - each team was
| formed in a completely different society, one values
| celebrity and quick-buck scamming, one values planting
| trees that cast shade long after you're dead. Pretending
| like the influential people who steer the most economic
| activity aren't to blame at all for that difference in
| culture is insane, especially when we have a felon
| president who has been pardoning many high profile
| fraudsters.
| tt24 wrote:
| Sorry, it's acceptable to mistreat luggage because the
| CEO's comp is higher than yours?
| lostlogin wrote:
| If your employer treated you like crap, would you do the
| minimum, or more?
| observationist wrote:
| Them being paid better wouldn't resolve the issue.
| Updating American culture such that individuals respected
| themselves, had a sense of shame, operated from a
| baseline of respect and gratitude for the opportunity to
| be working in the first place, these things fix the
| issue. Concurrently, the CEO respecting the workers, the
| institution, themselves, would result in wages
| commensurate to their value.
|
| Expecting excellence, putting care and craft into your
| work, is something that is taught, it doesn't just
| magically happen.
|
| Paying these same workers more would not noticeably
| improve outcomes, people would still lose luggage, steal
| shit, and then have even more money to spend.
|
| The workers and the CEO are products of their culture,
| and without some sort of specific intervention against
| the outcomes wrought by those cultural influences, things
| would continue as before. Serious institutions
| indoctrinate their members and build a culture oriented
| around expectations of excellence and care and craft.
|
| Such institutions can't compete in the marketplace we've
| set up, because it's cheaper to offer shitty service and
| low product quality, to keep employees expendable, low
| skill, low paid cogs, and to reward CEOs and management
| willing to screw over their fellow employees at every
| opportunity to ensure the number goes up.
|
| That doesn't change unless the culture changes, which
| would change the regulatory environment, which would
| allow for things like excellent service and quality to be
| valued accordingly. America doesn't value excellence, it
| values "number go up."
| gmd63 wrote:
| I'm interested to hear why you think that better pay
| wouldn't help the issue. Being comfortable with your
| living situation and feeling like you're respected in
| excess of your boss's federal or state legal obligations
| plays a big role in having the wherewithal to put serious
| effort into whatever you're doing day to day, and it
| helps to mitigate the divide between the richest and the
| poorest among us / bad jokes or insults that originate
| out of fear of being poor.
|
| > Such institutions can't compete in the marketplace
| we've set up, because it's cheaper to offer shitty
| service and low product quality, to keep employees
| expendable, low skill, low paid cogs, and to reward CEOs
| and management willing to screw over their fellow
| employees at every opportunity to ensure the number goes
| up.
|
| The federal minimum wage has been the same since 2009,
| but In-N-Out is an example of a company that chooses to
| avoid blaming the worker or the market or the regulatory
| environment for all of their business difficulties. They
| choose to pay well over the California minimum wage, and
| I don't find it coincidental that I've had better
| experiences with employees there vs some other fast food
| locations. Costco has made similar choices with how they
| treat their employees and they're doing great. No
| regulation needed, just better leadership.
|
| The CEOs that blame "inevitable" market forces on why
| they have to treat employees poorly while refusing to
| look inward will ironically lose out in the market. And
| at a larger scale, probably the countries too.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| It's certainly possible to find people who care about
| doing a job properly in a western society. Paying a bit
| more has been suggested on another post as a method of
| trying to achieve that, but I'd argue that that is
| necessary but not sufficient. You need to not only pay
| people a bit more, but also screen them very carefully
| for the attitude of doing the job properly.
|
| It is a cultural problem. Just paying a bit more won't
| fix it. By paying a bit more, you might be able to get a
| larger share of the limited portion of people in the
| society that care, but you're not changing the people
| fundamentally, just being more selective.
| qwe----3 wrote:
| They are paid less.... you know there are rich people in
| japan?
| burnte wrote:
| Years ago I had an argument with my HR director at the
| time. I Was hiring for a position and I said I was
| willing to pay what was approximately 10-15% above market
| for the position at the time. He said he could get me a
| dozen prospects at the market rate or even ten percent
| below, that I was wasting my budget. I said, "I don't
| want the people who will work for that, the people I'm
| looking for know they're worth more." He repeated he felt
| I was over paying. I said, "look at my head count, and
| compare it to our competitors. I have half the staff but
| higher metrics in every category. You don't hear about
| major or long lasting IT problems here. I'm paying 115%
| but I'm getting 150% and overall spending less."
|
| When your people feel respected and compensated, they
| work far better.
| lostlogin wrote:
| This is it. You're showing respect for your team,
| fighting for them and paying them more. When they know
| that, it surely leads to better work?
| psadauskas wrote:
| > financial and time constraints
|
| What a passive way to say executives kept a larger share of
| profits for themselves, forcing workers to be stressed and do
| a sub-optimal job.
|
| Its like the news reports that say "an officers weapon was
| discharged and someone died at the scene", rather than "a cop
| shot and killed a guy".
| hodgesrm wrote:
| > What a passive way to say executives kept a larger share
| of profits for themselves, forcing workers to be stressed
| and do a sub-optimal job.
|
| This is a very limited view of why things don't work. The
| main issue in my experience is whether the company values
| the outcome and ensures focus on optimizing for it. That
| can include everything from adequate staffing to comp to
| training to management focus. (A _lot_ of the last one.)
|
| You can spend a huge amount of money and still get a crappy
| outcome. US healthcare provides a rich field of examples.
| nick238 wrote:
| US healthcare is a leader in administration fees (e.g.
| paying health system executives) compared to other
| countries around the world. High US healthcare cost isn't
| because of increased usage, but because of the higher
| admin fees and higher prescription drug prices. Prices
| are fixed high because law prevents the government from
| negotiating prices (o.b.o. Medicare/aid), and those
| provisions were inserted on behalf of pharmaceutical
| companies so _their_ executives could make more money.
|
| Paying individual workers more may have some benefits,
| but I think the key issue is usually overworking and
| burnout because the incremental cost of adding a whole
| new employee is way higher than just pressuring workers
| to do more work in the same time.
| bakies wrote:
| Something I noticed when I traveled to Japan was how many
| workers there were just doing things. Attention to detail is
| so amazing. Things as simple as guiding people in the
| sidewalk while construction vehicles exit the site has a
| person dedicated to it
| mc32 wrote:
| Also you need to keep organized crime out of airports. Some
| percentage of lost luggage is actually stolen luggage.
| Misrouting is also another large percentage. In the US
| unclaimed lost luggage ends up in some gigantic warehouse in
| Alabama.
| tarentel wrote:
| What percentage? I imagine it is insanely low. The risk to
| reward ratio of making money off a random bag at the airpot
| has got to be as low, if not lower than, the actual
| percentage stolen. One thing I've never been worried about
| it is organized crime, or anyone really, stealing my bag at
| an airport.
| ummonk wrote:
| My understanding is it's taken as a given that the
| authorities at US airports aren't bothering to catch
| baggage / item thieves amongst airport staff. The only
| exception is when a firearm (or luggage containing a
| firearm) goes missing.
| nielsbot wrote:
| > financial and time constraints
|
| I read this as "profit focus"
| m3kw9 wrote:
| real world user interface done right
| Freedom2 wrote:
| I find that the US is the most likely country to have this
| attention to detail.
| pizzathyme wrote:
| As an American who has lived in Japan and traveled around
| Asia, Europe, and South America, Japan's attention to detail
| is almost superhuman. From how bathroom lines are managed,
| packages are wrapped, garden moss is curated, dishes are
| plated, everything is almost perfect. It's like the level of
| service in Michelin restaurants, applied down to the lowliest
| of jobs.
|
| There's nitpicks people will find with a statement like this
| but I've never found anything like it.
| adrian_b wrote:
| When traveling to Japan, I did not have the slightest problem
| with lost baggage, either at airports, or with the Japanese
| services that allow you to send your baggage from one hotel to
| another, to be able to travel more lightly.
|
| However, at the airport, when flying back home I had an
| unexpected experience. At my final destination, when I retrieved
| my checked baggage in the airport, it no longer had the padlock
| that it had at check in, in Japan.
|
| I assume that this happened because at the airport, after check
| in, they have cut the padlock, to inspect the baggage. I also
| assume that the inspection was caused by a big kitchen knife that
| was in the baggage. The kitchen knife had been bought from a shop
| from Osaka, and it was well sealed inside the original package
| closed by the shop, but this would not be seen at an X-ray
| machine.
|
| There was nothing else in the baggage that could be suspicious.
| In any case, if they inspected the baggage to check the knife, it
| was done carefully, and the content of the baggage was in the
| exact same positions as after packing.
| apetresc wrote:
| Why would a knife be a problem in a _checked_ bag, even if it
| hadn 't been sealed in the original package?
| fusslo wrote:
| I've asked TSA people similar questions when they checked my
| bag. He said that the item was blocking view of what was
| underneath it.
|
| I'd guess it's not the packaging, but a big piece of steel
| blocking the xray view.
| gib444 wrote:
| The x-ray machine aren't 360?
|
| If 360, I wonder does the operator perhaps not trust it?
| fusslo wrote:
| probably different fidelity of scanner, I'd guess. This
| was in 2018-2019
| ummonk wrote:
| This is reminding me of the story of a Japanese airport doing a
| full security sweep because one of the airport restaurants had
| misplaced a kitchen knife.
| rectang wrote:
| Applying cost-cutting analysis as an intellectual exercise...
|
| Airline ticket sales are so price driven that for much of the
| market, losing some percentage of bags won't change purchase
| decisions.
|
| I wonder if it's possible to identify which bags are from budget
| customers and for Kansai Airport to cut corners for those,
| accepting a certain loss percentage and saving money. It may not
| be:
|
| > _In addition to monitoring bags with sensors, employees also
| patrol the area to check for dropped bags. According to the
| airport management company, this additional step significantly
| reduces the risk of lost baggage._
|
| I think you either patrol for all dropped bags or give up the
| patrols entirely, assuming that bags from first-class and budget
| passengers end up in the same area.
| kseniamorph wrote:
| Visited Kansai recently and a few things stood out. Passport
| control was fully automated: just scanned and walked through.
| Security flagged something in my bag and resolved it really fast
| without slowing down the line. It's a small thing, but it's the
| kind of operational detail that makes a real difference. My
| travel experience has never been smoother. Makes me wonder why
| more airports don't get this right.
| renecito wrote:
| it't not lost until you stop looking for it :D
| hknceykbx wrote:
| Yes it all comes to the culture. But we need to take into account
| that Japanese culture for the workers themselves is absolutely
| horrible. Is all that suffering worth not losing a bunch of
| luggage or getting a train exactly the minute you expect? Not for
| me at least. I think it's better to cope with imperfections like
| that than to work in a toxic environment where you can't leave
| the office until your boss leaves. That same culture is the
| reason why we don't hear about successful startups from Japan.
| God forbid there is a single bug in it. But what's better - to
| have a software with a bug and not the cleanest code or not to
| have it at all? Hardware is another story of course. But my point
| is that there is both good and bad in any culture. Depends on how
| you look at it
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