Aircraft Owners & Pilots Ass'n v. Port Authority of NY

• Decision Date: 09 September 1969
• Docket Number: No. 68 C 775.,68 C 775.
• Citation: 305 F. Supp. 93
• Parties: AIRCRAFT OWNERS AND PILOTS ASSOCIATION and Max Karant, Frank K. Smith, and William D. Strohmeier on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. PORT AUTHORITY OF NEW YORK, a Municipal Body, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York

305 F. Supp. 93

AIRCRAFT OWNERS AND PILOTS ASSOCIATION and Max Karant, Frank K. Smith, and William D. Strohmeier on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. PORT AUTHORITY OF NEW YORK, a Municipal Body, et al., Defendants.

No. 68 C 775.

United States District Court E. D. New York.

September 9, 1969.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Joseph Lesser, New York City (Sidney Goldstein, Isobel E. Muirhead, Arthur P. Berg, and Herbert Ouida, New York City, of counsel), for Port of New York Authority, and another, for the motion.

Judah I. Labovitz, Philadelphia, Pa. (Laurence Rosenthal, Strasser, Spiegelberg, Fried & Frank, New York City, and Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen, Philadelphia, Pa., of counsel), for plaintiffs opposed.

Howard G. Law, Jr., New York City, for Lawyer Pilots Bar Association, amicus curiae.

MEMORANDUM and ORDER

DOOLING, District Judge.

The plaintiff association of aircraft owners and pilots and sixteen individual pilots and owners as plaintiffs and intervenors have sued to enjoin the further enforcement by the defendant Port of New York Authority of a "take-off" fee of twenty-five dollars exacted from each aircraft landing or taking off from the three major New York area airports during certain peak traffic hours. The twenty-five dollar fee does not apply to any aircraft operating with a seating configuration of twenty-five or more passengers nor does it apply to certain aircraft operating on designated runways as helicopters or as air taxis. The plaintiff association, which appears to have some 145,000 members, and the individual plaintiffs and intervenors belong to a class styled General Aviation, an ill-defined class which has in common the fact that in the generality of instances their aircraft would have to pay the twenty-five dollar fee if they landed or took off at the three major New York area airports during the peak hours.

The Port Authority has now moved to dismiss the complaint and for summary judgment; the plaintiffs, who had earlier moved for an injunction and are now holding that motion in abeyance, oppose the Port Authority's motion both on the ground that there are factual issues to be determined in the case in any event and on the further ground that even on the genuinely uncontested facts the fee must be held to be illegal and its exaction must be enjoined. It is concluded that the case is one within the jurisdiction of the Court, that none of the counts is required to be dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, and that the defendants are entitled to summary judgment at this time.

I

The basic and perhaps controlling facts in the case are so well known publicly as almost to be a matter of judicial notice. The Port of New York Authority, which now operates the three major airports and Teterboro airport, was formed by interstate compact between New Jersey and New York, it is charged with carrying out the "Comprehensive Plan for Development of the Port of New York." See, as embodying the compact and implementing legislation, New York Unconsolidated Laws Sections 6401, et seq. and particularly Sections 6407, 6411, 6412, 6451, 6452 and 6631-6647 (the last sections referring to air terminals); and see as to gubernatorial veto power Sections 7151-7154. Under the air terminals portion of the present day compact it is "the policy of the two states to encourage the integration of such air terminals so far as practicable in a unified system"; the Port Authority is authorized to "maintain and operate air terminals" and "air terminals" is defined to mean facilities "necessary, convenient or desirable for the landing, taking off, accomodation and servicing of aircraft of all types, including * * * any * * * contrivance * * * used for the navigation of * * * air or space, operated by carriers * * *, or for the landing, taking off, accomodation and servicing of aircraft owned or operated by persons other than carriers"; the Port Authority "shall be regarded as performing an essential governmental function in undertaking the * * * maintenance or operation of air terminals, and in carrying out the provisions of law relating thereto"; the Authority is authorized to apply directly to the proper federal officials "for federal loans or grants in aid of air terminals owned or operated by it"; with certain not presently material exceptions "all details of financing, construction, leasing, charges, rates, tolls, contracts and the operation of air terminals owned or controlled by the Port Authority shall be within its sole discretion and its decision in connection with any and all matters concerning such air terminals shall be controlling and conclusive." No action taken at any meeting of the Authority by any New York Commissioner has any effect until the Governor of New York has an opportunity to veto the same. The veto power must be exercised within ten days after the Governor receives the minutes of the action taken at the meeting; there is no pocket-veto; the action takes effect unless vetoed within the time limit. The guber-natorial veto nullifies the attempted action of the New York Commissioner or Commissioners involved. See New York Unconsolidated Laws Sections 6631, 6633, 6634, 6640, 6646 and 7151-7154.

The Authority operates John F. Kennedy International Aiport, LaGuardia Airport and Newark Airport, at which the twenty-five dollar fee is in effect, and it also operates Teterboro at which the charge is not in effect. The three major airports, Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, accommodate substantially all of the area's commercial airline traffic, and they have in the past handled General Aviation, including air taxis, and helicopters, on the same basis in terms of arrival and takeoff as the scheduled commercial airline passenger traffic. General Aviation accounts for a surprisingly large percentage of the "operations" (that is, landings and takeoffs) at the three major New York area airports. While there is the usual unaccountable failure of counsel to agree explicitly on the obviously relevant and little disputable figures, it appears without contradiction that in July 1968 16.6 percent of the "movements" at Kennedy were General Aviation, 11.7 percent being air taxi and 4.9 corporate and private; 32.1 percent of the movements at LaGuardia were General Aviation of which 8½ percent were air taxi and 23.6 percent corporate and private; and that 29.6 percent of the movements at Newark were General Aviation divided 14.3 percent to air taxi, and 15.3 percent corporate and private planes. Another set of figures used by the Property Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration in an affidavit in another case indicates that in 1968 the General Aviation percentages were 14 percent at Kennedy, 29 percent at LaGuardia and 23 percent at Newark. Other figures, such as those included in Exhibit F of defendants answers to the interrogatories, indicate that in 1966 General Aviation accounted for 32 percent of total movements at the three major airports combined and that air taxi traffic, far the fastest growing segment of the growing General Aviation workload, came to about 44 percent of the General Aviation total. No doubt these figures are subject to endless qualification, but they acceptably indicate that the General Aviation traffic dealt with is substantial, and that the air taxi segment of it is a definable segment and one which has been singled out for differential treatment.

The affidavit of the Property Administrator in the other case also indicates, what is the subject of a very generalized notice, that in the fiscal year 1968 domestic and international carriers flew 106.5 billion passenger miles as against an estimated 3.7 billion passenger miles flown by General Aviation aircraft. The point of such a statistic is to emphasize that in general, and as the twenty-five passenger configuration limitation indicates, General Aviation uses smaller aircraft and quite possibly reflects a shorter average haul than the carriers. In result that would mean — and this is not debated — that the average carrier takeoff and landing will reflect the takeoff and landing of a very much larger number of passenger seats than will the average takeoff and landing of a General Aviation plane. How this would be affected by sub-classifying General Aviation between "all other" General Aviation and air taxis is surely speculative at this time. The general picture is plain: General Aviation is not insubstantial in volume, disregarding the air taxi traffic, that it does not, operation for operation, handle so many passengers on average as do the carriers, and that until August 1, 1968, as a practical matter it had the same access, on a first-come, first-served basis to the facilities of major airports that the common carriers by air enjoyed.

Effective August 1, 1968, the Authority, for the professed purpose of relieving congestion and achieving maximum efficient operation at the three major airports, and with the professed intention of influencing General Aviation operators to transfer their operations where possible away from the runways and traffic control patterns at the three major airports during peak traffic periods, adopted a twenty-five dollar minimum charge to be put into effect during defined peak operating periods in lieu of the pre-existing five dollar minimum fee. The peak hours were defined as from 8 A.M. until 10 A.M. on Monday through Friday and from 3 P.M. until 8 P.M. on all seven days of the week. The fee applied in terms of twenty-five dollars per takeoff but it applied to any aircraft which either took off or landed during the peak hours and which had a seating configuration of less than twenty-five passengers. As originally adopted there were two exceptions: first, all helicopters were excluded and, second, air taxis operating pursuant to Authority permits, and permits were to be issued to air taxi operators conducting regular service for airline connecting...