Christine Hitt
On the Big Island of Hawaii, there are two airports, one in Kona and one in Hilo. They're about 80 miles from each other, and it takes roughly 1.5 to 2 hours to drive from one to the other. So when one airport shuts down, it's bound to disrupt travel plans, which is what happened last week.
In case you missed it, on Jan. 15, the Hawaii Department of Transportation found a crack in the runway at the Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport. As the hours went by, authorities saw that its degradation was worsening to a 3-foot hole, so officials made the decision to close the runway and immediately work on repairs.
"Closing a runway, like Kona Airport, is a tremendous decision. We understand the impacts they're going to have on travel, on the passengers, on our partner airlines and our cargo facilities that come through those areas," said Ed Sniffen, director of the state DOT, at a press conference.
At 4:20 p.m., officials shut down the runway and, overnight, they repaired a 10-by-20-foot section. The closure disrupted 26 flights, including nine transpacific flights and 17 interisland flights. Gov. Josh Green said that 160 people were placed into hotels.
The airport reopened the next day at 6 a.m. During the construction, however, the DOT also found another portion of the runway that needed work and planned to fix that overnight on Jan. 17.
The governor suggested that deluges of rain are what's causing some of the island's infrastructure to fail. Thunderstorms and heavy showers swept over the island just a few days prior.
Sniffen said the repairs they have done will last until the airport's forthcoming runway project.
"This comes right on the verge of us pushing out our $120 million construction project. We're going to be reconstructing that whole 11,000-foot runway -- and starting up by August/September of this year," he said. "So the timing is unfortunate, but we're happy that we made the decision to fix it rather than pushing this to a potential safety issue for our airlines."
Green added, "$120 million is going to go into Kona Airport to make sure that we have a facility for the future that is safe."