Who should be in the air business, and what are the proper rules of the game? These two questions state the central issues in a battle that has been waged before the Civil Aeronautics Board since the spring of 1946. The contestants on one side have been the certificated air lines,1 their trade association,2 and their wholly owned cargo ground service subsidiary.3 The carriers in this group, for convenience and because the term describes their principal business,4 will hereafter be referred to as the passenger carriers. The contestants on the other side have been a group of new companies, organized after the cessation of hostilities in the last war, who have devoted almost all of their energies to the development of commercial air freight. For convenience, and again because the term describes their principal business,5 these carriers will be referred to as the freight carriers. The battle before the CAB has been long and bitter, and it is still going on. That it has been long will be apparent from a glance at the proceedings involved. The Air Freight case,6 in which the issue of certification of carriers was directly posed, alone has required 65 days of hearings, some 30,000 pages of testimony and exhibits, briefs before examiners, a full year's study by the examiners, a lengthy examiner's report, briefs before the Board, oral argument before the Board, a reopened hearing in order to obtain some additional evidence, a second oral argument before the Board, a tentative decision by the Board, exceptions thereto, new briefs, still another argument before the Board, and at long last, a final decision, on August 2, I949, on applications most of which were filed in the spring of I946. Other proceedings have included the Air Freight Rate case,7 in which the carriers sought and received from the Board a minimum rate order8 halting the