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With the enactment of the 1958 Statute, the industry had every reason to believe that the same principles of procedural and substantive fairness would continue to be applied. Indeed, in a July 24, 1958 letter to Chairman Oren Harris of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, E.R. Quesada, then Chairman of the Airways Modernization Board, defended the proposal (ultimately enacted) to withdraw from CAB the power to review safety regulations issued by the Administrator, stating:

"It is essential that one agency of government and one agency alone, be responsible for issuing safety regulations if we are to have timely and effective guidelines for safety in aviation. The Administrative Procedure Act, under which these regulations will be issued, and a provision for appeals to the courts, provide the necessary safeguards against arbitrary action on the part of the issuing authority and eliminate any need for time-consuming appeals to another agency of government.

"...I am also authorized to state that the above stated views are the official views of the administration."

Having succeeded in obtaining, for FAA, unreviewable authority to issue safety regulations, and having, in the meantime, been named as the first Administrator of FAA, General Quesada, in one of his early acts in office, issued the compulsory retirement rule, effective at the admittedly-arbitrary age cutoff of 60 years. Then, rejecting all requests for hearings, and for an opportunity to have the basis for the new regulation tested on a public evidentiary record, General Quesada proceeded to apply the regulation to every airline pilot reaching age 60 without exception. CAB's apprehension that the Administrator, if left unsupervised, might ignore the legitimate rights of individuals (see the Paschke decision, p.7) had proven prophetic.