Rosecrans Memorial Airport celebrated the completion of its new runway Friday morning with a ribbon cutting.

The St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the reconstruction of the 4,797 foot by 75 foot assault strip runway.

“Construction took approximately four months.  We went a little bit longer due to weather and due to unforeseen circumstances we had an emergency on our main runway where concrete blew out,” said Abe Forney, Rosecrans Memorial Airport manager.

He said the runway had to be redone because it had started to deteriorate.

“When that happens in concrete it starts to become brittle and when concrete on the runway becomes brittle it causes little pieces of concrete to damage engines and propeller which we call sod.  As that concrete starts to deteriorate it becomes more dangerous for aircraft to take off and land,” Forney said. “We had to completely tear it out and replace it.”

The cost of the structure was around $5.8 million.

“That was funded through 65-percent guard and the remaining 35-percent was funded through a grant from the FAA and local capital improvement funds paid for 10-percent of that 35-percent,” Forney said.

The runway serves general aviation and the Missouri Air National Guard’s 139th Airlift Wing.

“This is big enough to land large aircraft and the C-130s use it for their assault training,” Forney said. “It’s very important for the 139th’s mission to get these assault landings in and train on that runway and for civilian use it’s very important because aircraft take off and land in the direction of the wind so if the wind is out of the east or out of the west the main runway which is north and south is a lot hard for them to utilize.”