Debris from damaged pavement closed the runway at Cyril E. King Airport Friday for about an hour.
Ken Hobson, V.I. Port Authority executive director said the runway was closed about 2 p.m. and opened at 3:10 p.m. Hobson said the closure "didn’t hamper any arrivals of departures." Flights are again running on schedule.
The King runway is being resurfaced, its first complete overlay of the runway since completion in 1991. "With resurfacing the runway, when the old asphalt doesn’t bind properly with the new asphalt, it starts peeling, and some of the new asphalt came up," Hobson said.
He said the depression in the runway was "only about an inch, which is acceptable by FAA standards, but the debris it caused could create serious damage to aircraft."
This is the third time since the project began that it’s been necessary to close the facility. It was closed for three hours in April, after a departing jet blew out a chunk of newly laid asphalt.
Work on the project is done from 10 p.m. through 5:30 a.m. each day by VI Paving, Inc. The repaired sections of the runway are tested daily for compliance with the project specifications.
The project is expected to be completed by December 2010 at a cost of $15 million — 95 percent of which is funded by the Federal Aviation Administration via an Airport Improvement Project grant. The remaining five percent is funded by VIPA.
