Brazil's Rousseff favors IPO of state airport authority

* Candidate Rousseff favors airport authority IPO

* Analysts worry airports not ready for mega events

* Private capital would improve management - Rousseff

BRASILIA, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Brazil's ruling party presidential candidate Dilma Rousseff said on Monday she favored an initial public share offer by the state-owned airport authority.

Her statement comes amid growing concern that Brazil's airports are ill-prepared to cope with fast-growing air traffic and the 2016 Olympics and 2014 soccer World Cup.

Travelers have complained about long queues and poor facilities at some of the country's major airports.

"I'm in favor of opening the capital of Infraero," Rousseff said in an interview with TV Globo, referring to the state-owned airport authority.

"We'll improve management because there will be private capital in Infraero," said Rousseff, a former leftist activist who has gone out of her way to reassure investors by pledging fiscal discipline and de facto central bank autonomy.

Last week, Brazil's number two airline, Gol (GOLL4.SA), was forced to delay hundreds of flights and cancel many others, causing a domino effect at airports throughout the country. [ID:nN03184290]

Rousseff, a career civil servant, said she was not happy with the pace of modernization of airports.

In the short-term, Infraero has sufficient funds to remedy pressing problems, Rousseff said, adding she would make the issue one of her top priorities if she won the Oct. 3 poll.

Rousseff is ahead of her main rival, Jose Serra of the centrist PSDB party, in three out of four major opinion polls.

Neither Serra nor Rousseff are expected to break with the mostly market-friendly economic policies of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. (Reporting by Raymond Colitt; editing by Luciana Lopez)