Chicago Airport Faces Serious Growing Pains

It's the kind of project the agency charged with the safety of civil aviation supports. At the same time, the top official at the Federal Aviation Administration concedes his power to get them built is limited.

ROBERT STURGELL, Acting Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration: With respect to building runways, it's just a bully pulpit for me. I can point out where we have the problems, where we have the challenges, put pressure on the local leadership, but it really, at the end of the day, it takes the local leadership to build, you know, for the future.

RAY SUAREZ: That future is expected to get progressively busier. The system handled 769 million passengers last year. The FAA expects that number to grow to a billion by 2016 and keep climbing, doubling by 2025.

More crowded airports, airplanes, and skies, hardly an appealing prospect for passengers already facing long lines, delays, cancellations, and lost luggage.

Shae Audette and her husband from Lake Zurich, Ill., are trying to track down their daughter's missing car seat after arriving at O'Hare. Air travel, they say, is becoming harder.

SHAE AUDETTE, Airline Passenger: I think our biggest issue was charging for baggage now, so now we're packing lighter. We have to carry it on, and it was more difficult to find overhead space. And having children, it's difficult, too.

RAY SUAREZ: The FAA's plan to cut delays hinges on the Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen. FAA officials say there's no way the current air traffic control system could cope with aviation's expected growth, given its reliance on decades-old, ground-based radar technology.

Central to the new multibillion-dollar concept is a move toward global positioning, using satellites, GPS for short.

ROBERT STURGELL: GPS gives us more precision, more accuracy. It's going to allow us to move traffic more efficiently and safer.

At its core, NextGen would provide a much more accurate, real-time picture of an aircraft's location, allowing planes to fly closer to one another and yet remain in safety.

The Air Traffic Controllers union complains that NextGen does not address what it calls a current crisis in staffing levels, as a wave of veteran personnel retires to be replaced by controllers with less experience.

Union officials also argue that better management of planes in the air is only one piece of the puzzle.

BRYAN ZILONIS: First and foremost, we need more runways. We need places to put aircraft. And no matter what equipment or technology bring us, if there's no place to put the airplane, there's really no piece of equipment that's going to change that landscape.

RAY SUAREZ: For its part, the FAA is pushing for better ground infrastructure, while warning some parts of the country are heading for trouble.

ROBERT STURGELL: As we look, you know, five, six, seven years from now, Southern California and San Francisco's Bay Area, we don't see a solution coming down the road for those that's going to meet the projected capacity growth.

You can't wait until you've got a problem to solve the problem; you've got to look out into the future and get these things online. It can take anywhere from, you know, 5 to 10 years to build a runway.

In a highly controversial move, the city of Chicago took legal action to condemn hundreds of homes in this neighboring jurisdiction to make way for airport expansion.

Most residents sold their homes and moved on, but a few holdouts are hoping for an 11th-hour legal reprieve to save the places they've invested in.

GAIL FLORES, Resident of Bensenville, Illinois: It's like walking on eggshells, so to speak, because you don't want to really put too much more in because you don't know. You know, are they just going to say, "Well, get out?" Who knows?

I'm hoping not, because, I say, this is America. I believe it's America. And, you know, I don't think they can just come and take your home.

RAY SUAREZ: It's the latest round in a decades-long struggle between Bensenville and its giant neighbor, Chicago. Critics of the expansion argue the city's plans will never find full funding and wouldn't have the beneficial impacts its proponents claim.

Prominent opponent John Geils sees the real solution to congestion as the modernization of O'Hare and the development of a third regional airport.

JOHN GEILS, President, Bensenville Village: There's no need to devastate a community with the high-handedness of the city of Chicago to make an airport plan a reality that's not going to meet the need of reducing delays and increasing capacity for the region.