Opinion ID: 679962
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Unambiguous Nature of ACSSP Regulation XV C.1.(a)

Text: 17 In support of this point, Pan Am points out that a regulation may be interpreted orally, and that the regulation at issue is ambiguous and therefore susceptible to such an interpretation. We are unable to accept appellants' premise that the supposed oral waiver was in fact an interpretation of an ambiguous regulation. As a matter of law the FAA regulation at issue here--ACSSP XV C.1. (a)--is not ambiguous, as the following discussion demonstrates. 18 In April 1986 the FAA established specific ACSSP regulations and mandated that they be followed at heightened security airports designated extraordinary security airports. Both Frankfurt and London's Heathrow airports were classified as extraordinary security airports. The central regulation at issue in this case, ACSSP regulation XV C.1. (a), concerns the detection of unaccompanied bags. It directs an air carrier operating out of an extraordinary security airport to 19 [c]onduct a positive passenger/checked baggage match resulting in physical inspection or noncarriage of all unaccompanied bags. The carrier may use either physical match or administrative match, but, in either case, it should be done in a way that passengers are aware of the use of the procedures. 20 Air carriers like Pan Am, thus were required under the regulations first to do a physical or an administrative match to detect unaccompanied bags, and then to physically inspect any unaccompanied bags before they could be loaded. ACSSP XV C clearly ordered that an air carrier operating out of an extraordinary security airport shall adopt and carry out the ... special procedures except where local conditions preclude and alternative measures have been approved by the FAA. 21 Under ACSSP XV C.1. (a) the positive match is designed to ensure that any unaccompanied bags definitely will be identified as such. The regulation permits the positive match to be done either as a physical match, in which passengers identify their bags on the tarmac, or an administrative match, in which the number of passengers boarding the aircraft and the number of bags checked are compared with the number of bags to be loaded. 22 Pan Am claimed that it conducted an administrative match. Plaintiffs averred that this administrative match did not comply with the regulations because it was incomplete and failed to identify all unaccompanied bags. Particularly, plaintiffs point out Pan Am's procedures did not identify the bags of interline passengers, i.e., those passengers who had transferred to a Pan Am flight from another airline and whose bags had been checked with the other airline at the passengers' point of origin. 23 If a match conducted under the regulations revealed unaccompanied bags, the regulations expressly directed the airline to conduct the second step of the process, physical inspection, before it could carry the bags. ACSSP XV C.1. (a). Plaintiffs demonstrated that Pan Am and Alert x-rayed all bags transferred from other carriers--so-called interline bags--but conducted no other inspection of such bags. Pan Am and Alert assert that physical inspection could be interpreted to mean an x-ray inspection. For several reasons, we think this a strained reading of the unambiguous regulation. 24 First, the FAA promulgated Physical Inspection Guidelines in the ACSSP which specified that physical inspection involves opening and inspecting all compartments of baggage. The guidelines do not mention x-ray as an acceptable means of inspection. Second, the jury heard testimony from Pan Am's own General Manager at Heathrow, and other witnesses as well, that physical inspection under the regulations involved opening up bags and that x-raying them did not satisfy the regulation. Third, ACSSP regulations applicable at other, lower security airports explicitly permitted x-ray or physical inspections. Thus, it is plain that the regulations applicable at Frankfurt and London's Heathrow were unambiguous: they did not permit x-ray inspections as a substitute for a physical inspection. Appellants' reliance on United States v. Eastern Air Lines, Inc., 792 F.2d 1560, 1563 (11th Cir.1986), is inapposite because that case involved a more broadly worded regulation, one susceptible to different interpretations. 25 We hold, therefore, that the district court did not err in refusing to allow witnesses--like the co-chair of the Pan Am Security Task Force, Richard Cozzi--to testify that they thought the regulations were ambiguous. As a matter of law, ACSSP XV C.1. (a) is not ambiguous in requiring a positive match and physical inspection of unaccompanied bags before they may be carried on board a departing plane. Introducing testimony to the contrary would have invaded the court's function of determining the law and instructing the jury as to that law. See FAA v. Landy, 705 F.2d 624, 632 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 895, 104 S.Ct. 243, 78 L.Ed.2d 232 (1983).