Court Opinion

ID: 9468954
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:27:58.165784+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:08.184447
License: Public Domain

MERRILL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent as to the October, 1979, order, The question is not whether Bakersfield and Kern County are now receiving essential air service. The question is whether the Board, by its order, has determined Bakersfield’s essential air transportation in the manner contemplated by the Airlines Deregulation Act. In my judgment, it has not.
It must be emphasized that the Act contemplates that deregulation will be phased in over a ten-year transition period. It is the sufficiency of the assurance that essential air transportation will be provided during that transition period that is here at issue.
The Board’s order follows guidelines established by regulation. Those guidelines provide a formula which has, with few exceptions, been applied across the board to all communities as to which a determination must be made. However, as defined by § 1389(f), essential transportation is that which will “satisfy the needs of the community.” Senator Cannon, chairman of the Senate’s Aviation Subcommittee and one of the Act’s managers, said at one point with reference to the pending bill:
“The key to the whole program is to obtain the quality and quantity service which best meets the unique needs of each community * *
The Act, then, contemplates that the Board will, as to each eligible point, ascertain and set forth the needs of the community for air transportation, and will then, by the methods set forth in the Act, see to it that the community receives that level of service during the transition period.
The Board’s determination in this case does not comply with the Act. It is in truth no determination at all. It does not ascertain the extent of the community’s needs for air transportation. It does not serve to give assurance that the Board will see to it that air service to the level of need is provided. Instead, it announces the Board’s conclusion that air traffic above the specified minimum can profitably be supplied and thus that if any community generates traffic in excess of this minimum, market forces will operate to supply it as new airlines are attracted by the profit potential. The Board’s determination, then, is simply a prediction of how the community’s needs— whatever they may be — will be met; a prediction that Board assistance will not be required where traffic exceeds the specified minimum. By determining “essential air transportation” in this fashion the Board has substituted prediction for the assurance that the Act contemplates: that the community’s needs will be met — by market forces or by Board assistance — during the transition period. Prediction is cold comfort without assurance that it will be backed up.
By substituting prediction for assurance in this fashion, and by giving its prediction such force and effect, the Board’s guidelines actually operate to subject communities to instant deregulation, dependent forthwith upon the operation of market forces without the softening benefits of a transition period. Thus, they effectively do away with the transition period provided by the Act.
Petitioners do not now complain of the service they are receiving. They point out, however, that their history over the past months 1 demonstrates that the Board’s de*1229termination did not provide them with the service actually needed by the community while new airlines were establishing themselves. They argue that there is no assurance that what happened during the past months will not happen again.
It may well be, as the Board predicts, that market forces in due course will regularly provide all the air service needed by a community. The Act proceeds on the assumption that after transition this will be the case. A community is, nevertheless, during the transition period entitled to assurance that market forces will operate in accordance with the Board’s prediction and that if they do not the Board, during that transition period, will provide air service to the level of essential need.
What that level should be remains for the Board to fix in accordance with the provisions of § 1389(f).
I would vacate the Board’s order of October, 1979, and remand for further proceedings, looking to a determination of essential air transportation in accordance with § 1389(f).

. In proceedings before the Board, the Aviation Director of Kern County states in affidavit:
“Since January of 1979, I have witnessed: a) More than a 55% decline in air service patronage;
bí The termination of Las Vegas service by Hughes Airwest;
cl The initiation of Las Vegas service by Apollo Airways;
d! The termination of service to San Francisco, Monterey and Visalia by United Airlines;
*1229e) The initiation of premature service to San Francisco with disasterous results;
f) The termination of 25% of Los Angeles service by United Airlines followed by a total termination of that service;
g) The initiation and almost immediate termination of service to Los Angeles by Air Pacific;
h) The entry of Aspen Airways into the Los Angeles market;
i) The initiation and almost immediate termination of Las Vegas service by Sierra Flight Service;
j) A complete turnover in equipment by Swift Airlines;
k) The threat of a corporate takeover of Swift Airlines;
l) The acquisition of Air Pacific, and attempted acquisition of Apollo Airways by Gem State;
m) Most recently, a suspension of 20% of its Los Angeles service by Aspen Airlines.”