Robert H. Jackson

“ The Civil Aeronautics Board asks us to hold that it is denied by its organic Act any power retroactively to fix rates for carrying air mail. It has not convinced me that it has no power, whatever it should wisely do with it as matter of policy.
The fundamental premise of the Court's opinion is that the function of the Board in fixing the air-mail rate is analogous to rate-making for a railroad or a public utility. The two types of rates are not comparable. 'Rate' as applied to the Government's air-mail payments is an euphemism to embrace a subsidy as well as compensation. ”

“ Utility services must be paid for currently; air-mail payments can be and are being paid in lump sums on account of items long past.
Congress, in the Act before us, set up a scheme for dealing with each according to its separate nature. The rate for public carriage of passengers and goods by air lines, of course, cannot be fixed retroactively on the basis of experience, for the public must know at the time they take service hat they are to pay for it and the carrier must collect then or never. ”

“ Similar costs were incurred by United and American in 1947 and 1948 when the DC-6 was grounded. These costs are merely another form of developmental costs attributable to the introduction of a new air craft type. It is clear that they are, in these cases, of such severity as to obstruct their current development. ”