The individual airlines pay for a large share of airport expansion. In 1999, the airlines delayed improvements to the existing terminal to 2005 after agreeing they would contribute a total $75 million for the work. Now the south terminal project is being pushed back another two years at least.

OIA officials couldn't be reached at GlobeSt.com's publication deadline. But business development staffers at the airport confirm first-quarter passenger traffic was down 14.2% from 2001 when the count was 28.3 million passengers. That number was three million lower than OIA's projection in 2000.

Nationally, traffic was down 12% in the first five months, the Airport Transport Association says in its periodic printed updates. Airport expansion delays are also evident in San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Boston and Fort Lauderdale.

The south terminal delay in Orlando is hurting local and regional contractors who had banked on bidding on millions of dollars of new work that would have been generated by the project.

"Many of these small to mid-sized firms will probably be going out of business shortly because they had made their own business expansion projections based on the start of the new terminal," a representative for a regional contracting firm tells GlobeSt.com on condition of anonymity.

Central Florida's tourism industry is beginning to attract its regular leisure and business guests but the majority of them are arriving by car rather than by plane, tourist officials confirm.

Meanwhile, at least four national airlines that serve OIA, are asking the federal government for billions in loan guarantees under a new program aimed at helping the industry recover from the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that crippled air travel.

The airlines are United Airlines, America West, US Airways and American TransAir.