Kadena Re-opens Runway

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Justin Veazie
  • 18 Wing Public Affairs
KADENA AIR BASE, Japan --  The 18th Wing celebrated the re-opening of the north runway during a ceremony yesterday. The event also marked the re-opening of the entire airfield with both runways now available after 17 months of single runway operations.

The construction began in October of 2010 with the closure of the south runway for repairs that took approximately nine months to complete. While construction was underway all aircraft operations moved to the north runway. Once the south runway re-opened to operations in June 2011 the north runway closed for repairs until Thursday morning.

The U.S. funded construction project took approximately 18 months to complete and included milling and overlaying existing asphalt pavement, replacing individual concrete pavement slabs, repairing runway lights, runway distance-to-go markers and replacing emergency barrier shelters.

In total, improvements are valued in excess of $19.5 million.

"We replaced nearly 162,000 cubic feet of concrete pavement, over 10% of the runway pavement. In local terms, that would equate to 48,498 Tatami Mats, or enough Tatami Mats for 10,777 Tea Rooms. Another way of looking at it is the amount of concrete replaced was the same as a stack of Tatami Mats 9,602 feet (2,910 meters) high," said Brig. Gen. Matthew Molloy, 18th Wing commander in describing the construction that went into the north runway.

The project was completed under the direction of Project Manager Kevin Rogers, 718th Civil Engineer Squadron, and with assistance from representatives of the US Army Corps of Engineers Okinawa Area Office, the 18th Contracting Squadron, and the 18th Operations Support Squadron.

"Overall, the Kadena airfield is large and diverse in operations and requires continual maintenance to sustain operations. We typically have projects of substantial magnitude occurring every 3-5 years," said Rogers.