Great Lakes Airlines, Inc. v. Civil Aeronautics Board

294 F.2d 217
CourtCourt of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
DecidedFebruary 24, 1961
DocketNos. 15015, 15026, 15039, 15041, 15042
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 294 F.2d 217 (Great Lakes Airlines, Inc. v. Civil Aeronautics Board) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Great Lakes Airlines, Inc. v. Civil Aeronautics Board, 294 F.2d 217 (D.C. Cir. 1961).

Opinions

PRETTYMAN, Circuit Judge.

Petitioners in these cases are unsuccessful applicants for final authority to perform supplemental air service. Their applications were denied by the Civil Aeronautics Board in Order No. E-13436 on January 28, 1959.1 The Board found that during the period when these carriers were operating under interim exemptions they had violated provisions of the Civil Aeronautics Act and the Board’s regulations and had thus exhibited a lacs [221]*221of “compliance disposition” which disqualified them for final authority as supplemental carriers.2 By the terms of the order the interim exemption authority under which petitioners had previously been operating was to terminate sixty days after the effective date of the order.

In petitioning this court for review of the Board’s order these carriers make the following contentions:

1. Petitioners were not found unqualified for their existing exemption authority ; and because this authority constituted a “license” within the meaning of Section 2(e) of the Administrative Procedure Act3 the Board erred in cancelling it without bringing a proceeding for that purpose in accordance with Section 9(b) of that Act.4

2. The Board’s procedure was defective because the question of past violations was not in issue and the applicant-carriers had no notice that this question would be tried and determined in this proceeding.

3. The Board violated Section 9(b) of the Administrative Procedure Act by terminating petitioners’ domestic operating authority before passing upon the foreign and overseas aspects of the applications.

4. The Board should reconsider its decision as to these petitioners in the light of this court’s decision5 holding that the Board erred in granting certificates to the qualified applicants.

Additional arguments are made by individual carriers; we will discuss them later and separately.

We think petitioners’ contentions, above stated, cannot be sustained and that the Board’s order must be affirmed.

This is another phase of a long controversy concerning irregular or nonscheduled air carriers, most of it spelled out in court and Board opinions and rulings.6 The order here under attack is the culminating order in a long investigation begun in 1951 after a series of lesser efforts over many years to reach a satisfactory conclusion to the problem. In this order the Board made its decision as to the form of the operating authority for these carriers, and its decisions as to the qualifications of the individual applicants. As wé have indicated, it found the present petitioners unqualified.

I

Petitioners argue that the operating authority they possessed under an interim exemption was a “license” that could be cancelled only after a compliance proceeding had been brought against them and they had been given an opportunity to conform their conduct to the law. They claim that the Board cancelled these licenses for nonscheduled service in the process of denying their applications for the new and different [222]*222supplemental service. This argument fails in several respects.

First, assuming for the purposes of the argument that petitioners did have “licenses”, they were temporary or conditional. They were not withdrawn, suspended, revoked or annulled within the meaning of Section 9(b) of the Administrative Procedure Act; they expired, or terminated, by their own terms.

From its inception in 1938 the Board has been concerned with the role of nonscheduled air carriers in national air transportation. Moreover it was aware from the outset that, if nonscheduled service was to become permanent, careful study would be necessary to define the precise limits of the ultimate operating authority. Because it was difficult to determine whether and to what extent such service was needed, and because such service presented a potential threat to scheduled, certificated service, the Board authorized nonscheduled service •only on a temporary basis. Every regulation or order issued by the Board in which this service was permitted carefully conditioned the authority. In December, 1938, for example, when the Board first spoke on the-question, it issued an exemption for nonscheduled carriers that was to last “[u]ntil the authority shall adopt further rules, regulations or orders with respect to such matter”.’7 An amendment to this regulation issued in 1946 bore the caption “Temporary exemption of non-scheduled operations from certain provisions of Title IV of the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, as amended.”8 When the Board imposed the requirement for letters of registration, in 1947, it provided that these letters were to expire upon a finding by the Board that enforcement of Section 401 of the Civil Aeronautics Act9 would be in the public interest and would no longer be an undue burden upon irregular carriers.10 In 1949 the Board terminated this “blanket” exemption. In its place it conferred a temporary exemption that was to terminate within thirty days of the effective date of that order unless the carrier filed an application for an individual exemption. If such an application were filed, the temporary exemption would continue “until, but only until, the date specified in the Board’s order finally disposing of [the carrier’s] application for individual exemption”.11 Petitioners duly filed such applications, and in 1951 these applications were consolidated into the Large Irregular Air Carrier Investigation. At that time the Board stated:12

“ * * * it should be clearly understood by all parties to the proceeding that the Board considers that the issues in this proceeding include the possibility that at its close the Board may deny the applications of the Large Irregular Carriers and enter such further orders as may be necessary to terminate any operating rights which derive from Part 291 or any amendment thereof. Whether the Board will do so, of course, will depend upon the findings made and conclusions reached upon the basis of the record in the proceeding.”

It was not until this investigation was concluded and the order under review here was issued that the Board made any formal findings with respect to the qualifications of individual carriers. Since 1938 the carriers had been operating at the sufferance of the Board, and there was never any guarantee that all of these carriers would be found qualified to perform the service finally defined by the Board. Indeed there was no guáran[223]*223tee during these years that this type of service would be authorized at all.13 Thus the proceeding that resulted in the order attacked here was, in a sense, an original licensing proceeding. Our petitioners did not have their licenses revoked as “punishment” for past conduct; they were found unqualified for permanent licenses, because they lacked compliance disposition; and their temporary licenses thereupon expired.

Moreover the legislative history of the Administrative Procedure Act makes clear that Section 9(b) was not intended to apply to temporary licenses. Both the Senate14 and House15 Reports contain express statements to this effect.

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Bluebook (online)
294 F.2d 217, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/great-lakes-airlines-inc-v-civil-aeronautics-board-cadc-1961.