Reuters/Sao Paulo/Brasilia

With less than 10 weeks until the start of the World Cup, work on crucial new airport terminals has fallen behind in most of the dozen Brazilian host cities, heightening the risk of overcrowding and confusion during the tournament.

A temporary canvas terminal will be used instead of a planned airport expansion to receive fans in Fortaleza, which will host six matches including Brazil’s game against Mexico and a quarter-final.

Officials are already preparing alternatives for other cities. “Other airports have not said anything yet, but they will probably have to come up with contingencies,” said Carlos Ozores, a principal at aviation consultancy ICF International who has consulted for Brazilian airlines and airport operators.

Concern over Brazil’s airports is especially acute since they represent some of the tournament’s most lasting investments.

A host of other transportation projects have been scrapped or postponed, adding to criticism that the World Cup will leave few long-term benefits for ordinary Brazilians.

Quick fixes and last-minute deliveries are a recipe for chaos in the complex aviation industry, analysts say. Bungled openings of terminals from London to Denver took months to straighten out.

The stakes will be high in Brazil as more than 600,000 visitors arrive for the World Cup starting in June, one of the biggest sudden influxes the country has ever seen.

“People coming to Brazil are going to be shocked, especially Americans, by the how bad the airports are,” said Paul Irvine, who runs travel agency Dehouche in Rio de Janeiro. “There won’t be any catastrophic issues ... but they will be chaotic and ugly as heck,” he said.

Any air travel chaos could be especially embarrassing for President Dilma Rousseff, who made a bold political bet by privatising a handful of key airports to ready them for the tournament, accelerating work that had languished under state control.

The move broke with the ideology of her leftist Workers’ Party.  If those airports fail to deliver the smooth service that helped to justify the privatisations, the issue could quickly become an election campaign issue as Rousseff seeks a second term in October.

The airport concessions are a closely watched first step in her more than $100bn plan to draw private investment to public infrastructure projects. Construction delays at publicly administered airports have been far more dramatic. At the start of last month, airport overhauls in seven World Cup host cities were only half finished or worse, according to Infraero, the government agency that oversees airport operations.  Still, the privately run projects are drawing scrutiny.

Civil aviation authority ANAC has redoubled its inspections of three privatised airports since learning at the start of this year that work was behind proposed timelines.

At the international airport serving the capital Brasilia, the racket of jackhammers rings through an open concourse, where passengers riding up an escalator can see a six-foot wide hole in the floor behind a boarded-off area.

One new terminal is set to open in weeks and the private operator promises another by May, although municipal authorities are downplaying that possibility.