The Air Force and the Hawai'i Air National Guard are renewing efforts to build a shorter runway at Kona International Airport on which C-17 pilots and crews could practice touch-and-go landings and takeoffs for their heavy-lift cargo planes.

The existing 11,000-foot runway is too long to train for operations that would take place on short lengths of pavement.

The eight Hawaii-based C-17 Globemasters now fly to Washington state, at a cost of $8,000 an hour, to practice on a shorter runway there. The two services want to build a new $30 million, 3,900-foot runway, 700 feet from the airport's present runway.

Airport officials like the idea because the federal government would pay for it.