Court Opinion

ID: 9444549
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:05:10.425273+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:55.207381
License: Public Domain

PRETTYMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
I would remand this case for further hearing on the airport question. In one sentence the Board’s order from which this appeal was taken specified the terminal point and designated the air*507port to be used. I think sufficient notice that the airport question was to be decided in this proceeding was not given.
Central Airlines’ application for a certificate was for a route “Between the terminal point Fort Worth, Texas, the intermediate points Dallas, Texas, Den-ton, Texas, * * It said nothing about the airport to be used. The report of the prehearing conference was to the same effect. This was the extent of the notice given as to the nature and scope of the hearing to be held.
No specific notice was given that the Board might designate Dallas-Fort Worth as the terminal point. Nevertheless, under the doctrine of the State Airlines case,1 we are compelled to conclude that Dallas and all other parties had ample notice that, instead of specifying Fort Worth as the terminal point and Dallas as an intermediate point, the Board might combine the two and designate Dallas-Fort Worth as the terminal point.
But the question of what airport should be used to serve the designated terminal point was a different question. In its brief the Board tells us:
“Under the terms of each carrier’s certificate in effect since the beginning of the administration of the Civil Aeronautics Act, a carrier after being authorized to serve a new point is required to file with the Board an ‘airport notice’ notifying the Board of the airport selected by it to serve the new point. Under the Board’s practice the carrier is permitted to use that airport if (a) the airport is suitable for the purpose when compared with other available airports in the vicinity, and (b) the airport does in fact serve the designated point.”
The designation of “Dallas-Fort Worth” as a terminal was, as the Board phrased it in the Supplemental Opinion dated September 24, 195B, “a designation of service to Dallas and Fort Worth as a single rather than separate points.” If this was authorization of service to “a new point”, the above quotation from the Board’s brief applies directly and specifically. If it was not designation of a new point, but was merely service by a new airport to two points already served, the Airport Regulations2 apply specifically. Those Regulations apply in terms to cases where a carrier desires to serve a point already named in the certificate but “through the use of any airport not then regularly used by such holder,” i. e., carrier. Central was serving Dallas and Fort Worth but at Love and Meacham Fields; Amon Carter Field was an airport not then regularly used. In either event, whether “Dallas-Fort Worth” is a new point or is merely the two old points served by an airport not heretofore regularly used, the designation of the airport is a separate proceeding from the grant of the certificate. Thus, according to the Board’s statement and its Regulations, the choice of airports is a problem to be considered in “airport notice” proceedings, separately from other issues in a certification proceeding. Of course, if the notice in the certification proceeding had contained notice of the airport issue, I suppose the two questions could have been combined in a single proceeding. But that was not done in this case.
It seems to me that Dallas had a right to rely upon the established procedure in respect to the designation of the airport to be used. It had a right to expect, in the absence of any notice to the contrary, that, after the terminal points and other issues in the certification proceeding had been concluded, the selection of airports would be another step to be taken pursuant to an “airport notice”. Dallas had no semblance of a notice that, contrary to the established procedure, the selection of the airport would be dealt with in the same order which specified *508the terminal points. It seems to me that Dallas was entitled to that notice.
In its petition for reconsideration Dallas offered to present evidence “showing first, tha'; service of Dallas through Fort Worth International Airport (Amon Carter Field) is not and in the circumstances will not be adequate service required by Section 404 of the Act, and second, that if under the peculiar circumstances of any case both Dallas and Fort Worth are to be served through a single airfield, the public interest requires that Love Field should be the field used for that purpose in view of the much greater volume cf available traffic to and from Dallas than to and from Fort Worth.” In its memorándum denying reconsideration the Board did not treat of this proffer cf evidence but merely referred to facts which it said were indicated in the record.
I would remand the case for further hearing upon the airport question and for a re determination of that question pursuant to the established procedure and regulations relating thereto.

. Civil Aeronautics Board v. State Airlines, 1950, 338 U.S. 572, 70 S.Ct. 379, 94 L.Ed. 353.

. 14 Code Fed.Regs. § 202.3.