Inside the cramped space of the tower, I also get a view of the widening generation gap: The two freshest recruits, both in their mid-twenties, have been on the job for only a few weeks. They came to JFK directly from the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City, a three-month boot camp for new hires who have already passed the difficult aptitude test required for admission. But at least half of the controllers in the tower could retire in the next two years. One says he could work for another three years but is instead leaving as soon as he's eligible for retirement at the end of the month. "I've had enough," he says. "I'm moving to Vegas. This kind of shift work is really rough on your body. It's a young person's job." Once, training was time-consuming and it would take years to work your way up the food chain to a job at a place like New York, where the pay is adjusted to reflect the greater workload. But now the new crop of recruits will have to be moved into positions of authority at busy facilities far faster than they may have in the past. FAA officials believe the high pay that seasoned controllers command (they'll be earning $95,000 after about five years) will always make the job appealing, and says the agency has no worries about finding enough bright people to fill openings.

To address the looming issue of ever worse flight delays, JFK in March began limiting takeoffs and landings to no more than 80 per hour, supposedly the maximum it can handle under new flight caps set by a committee of bureaucrats in Washington. But, inevitably, delayed flights get pushed into the next departure block, so the actual crunch will be worse. Other airports are struggling with solutions: Chicago O'Hare put in caps, as did Newark, and LaGuardia, where some landing slots may be sold to the highest bidder. But these short-term cures for the overcrowding are mere Band-Aids: What's required, say aviation experts, is a sort of Manhattan Project of the skies, a heavily funded push to the next generation of technology.

IS NEW TECHNOLOGY THE ANSWER?

The flight caps, loudly protested by the airline industry and the airports (both of which stand to lose revenue) were just one of a battery of fixes suggested by the U.S. Department of Transportation, in tandem with NextGen, an ambitious "airspace redesign" that seeks to accommodate more planes by widening approach paths into airports. The first phase focused on the New York area's lower airspace, where the need is obvious, but it also served as a reminder of how difficult it can be to make even modest improvements. A handful of new takeoff and landing procedures—designed to squeeze in a few more hourly departures at Newark Airport—drew immediate flak from residents unaccustomed to the sound of aircraft buzzing their homes, as well as from the controllers themselves, who claimed that the FAA had too hastily rushed to get more planes in and out of congested airports. Those charges were put into stark relief in mid-January when a trainee at the regional air-traffic-control center on Long Island put two Continental planes bound for Newark on the same flight path. The jets passed within 600 feet of each other, and the rookie who had made the blunder was reportedly so shaken that he took a leave of absence. The NATCA local said that the risk was aggravated by the new procedures, which brought more planes together closer to the airport.