Court Opinion

ID: 9486327
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:44:32.915362+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:38.955413
License: Public Domain

STEPHEN F. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I agree with the majority opinion but write separately to respond to a subtle argument offered by the petitioner in favor of its claim that the FAA should consider the possible negative effect of the fee on the “capacity ... of the national air transportation system”. See 49 U.S.C. app. § 1513(e)(2)(B)(i) (Supp. II 1990). The FAA justified imposition of the fee on the basis of its conclusion that investment of its proceeds in airport improvements would enhance that capacity, Record of Decision at 3, thereby satisfying one of the criteria for imposition of the fee (criteria specified by Congress as alternatives). Northwest argues that the fee in fact will render some flights unprofitable (or insufficiently profitable to justify their continuation), will therefore cause it to offer fewer flights, and will thus diminish the overall offerings of “the national air transportation system”. See Maj. Op. at 68-69; Petitioner’s Br. at 21-23.
*74The FAA was, I believe, justified in not pursuing this complex contention, even though it appears to raise a perfectly legitimate empirical question. First, the FAA may reasonably read the statute’s reference to capacity as referring simply to the physical capacity of the air transportation system’s facilities on the ground, not the totality of the system, as Northwest suggests. Second, even if capacity were to be viewed in the sense Northwest contemplates, the statute does not clearly require that, the FAA consider every single factor that might affect it, no matter how remotely. Accurately assessing Northwest’s thesis would require careful evaluation of elasticity of demand in all the city-pair markets involved in use of Memphis International Airport; the ultimate use of the airplane capacity released by Northwest’s possible reduction in service (the planes are not going to disappear, after all); and the tendency of the improvements funded by the fee to produce convenience advantages that might offset the negative effects of the fee itself. Besides its enormous complexity, the inquiry would in all likelihood yield no certain answer. In the absence of very clear language, which the statute lacks, we cannot read it as compelling such a study.