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Working rapidly and into the early hours of Tuesday, the state Department of Transportation was able to patch large cracks on a runway to allow the Kona airport to reopen.

Another crack was discovered Tuesday, but the repairs will be done for three hours starting at midnight and won’t prompt another closure, officials said during a press conference in Honolulu.

The nearly 12-hour closure disrupted 26 flights to Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport, nine trans-Pacific and 17 interisland. In all, 13 flights were canceled and 160 diverted passengers were put up in local hotels.

The incident illustrated how critical it is for Hawaii to maintain transportation and tourism infrastructure, Gov. Josh Green said Tuesday during a press conference.

“A lot of people, when they ask us about what Department of Transportation is doing the airport, they’re interested in kind of the shinier items — the terminals and beautifying the space, which is really important,” he said. “But perhaps even more important is to make sure that we have all of our infrastructure as solid as can be. In fact, it is more important because it’s safety-related. So that’s what I’ve asked the director to take on, and he’s charging ahead of our projects.”

DOT Director Ed Sniffen attributed the cracks to an accelerated degradation of the 30-year-old runway. Recent heavy rains also contributed to the degradation, even though Kona is usually a dry region. Other parts of the runway were also at risk of cracking.

Construction and engineering company Grace Pacific was contracted to patch the cracks and holes, which involved flying crew members from Honolulu to the airport in Hilo, then transferring them to Kona. The 11,000-foot runway in Kona was already slated to receive $120 million in upgrades beginning in August, but Sniffen said the cracks necessitated doing repair work immediately.

While some of the damage was measured in inches Monday morning, one area grew to the size of a 3-foot hole by the afternoon. The decision to shut down the airport to both arriving and departing flights came at around 4:30 p.m.

“The timing is unfortunate, but we’re happy that we made the decision to fix it rather than pushing this to potential safety issues for airlines,” Sniffen said.

He added that another area with cracking still needed to be fixed but said Tuesday that it wasn’t “as concerning as what we fixed last night. Repairs will be done between midnight to 3 a.m. Wednesday, but it’s “not expected to close it down again,” he said.

For Green, the runway defects particularly hit home, as he used to represent portions of the Big Island in the state House and Senate and estimates that he has flown over 1,000 roundtrips out of Kona.

“I’m familiar with every inch of that space, and it’s an older facility that needs support,” he said.

Aging, weather-worn airports are a problem statewide. Another $135 million is slated for similar work at Lihue Airport on Kauai.

The governor remarked on how fast the Kona airport work was performed, given Hawaii’s reputation as moving slow on construction projects. But transportation, travel and tourism are central to the state’s operations.

“Our commitment to infrastructure is enormous,” he said. “We have inherited over the years some significant projects that have to be upgraded.”