## Facts

- Alaska hunting and fishing guides commonly sold package services (lodging, guiding, and air transportation in light aircraft) for a flat fee, with the guide often serving as pilot.
- Beginning in 1963, the FAA’s Alaska Region consistently advised guide-pilots that these flights were treated as private, not subject to regulations governing commercial air operations.
- This approach relied on an administrative decision holding that flights “merely incidental” to a guiding business and not separately billed were not carriage “for compensation or hire.”
- In January 1998, the FAA published a “Notice to Operators” stating that guide-pilot operations must comply with FAA regulations applicable to commercial air operations.
- Alaska Professional Hunters Association and individual guide-pilots petitioned for review, arguing the Notice reversed a longstanding interpretation and could not be issued without notice-and-comment procedures.

## Issues

1. Whether the FAA’s 1998 “Notice to Operators” was a legislative rule that required notice-and-comment rulemaking under APA § 553.
2. Whether the Notice merely restated or clarified existing law as an interpretive rule or general policy statement exempt from APA § 553 procedures.

## Decision

- The court granted the petition for review.
- The court held the Notice functioned as a substantive (legislative) rule because it changed a longstanding regulatory interpretation and imposed new, enforceable obligations on guide-pilots.
- Because the FAA did not use notice-and-comment rulemaking, the Notice was set aside as procedurally invalid.

## Legal Principles

- APA § 553 generally requires notice-and-comment procedures for legislative rules that create or change binding rights or obligations.
- An agency document labeled as interpretive guidance or a policy statement may be treated as a legislative rule if, in operation, it makes a significant change to prior definitive agency practice and imposes new substantive burdens.
- Courts evaluate the practical effect of an agency action, not merely its label, in determining whether notice-and-comment rulemaking is required.
- A reversal of a long-applied interpretation that regulated parties have relied on typically cannot be implemented through informal guidance when it effectively changes regulatory duties.

## Conclusion

The D.C. Circuit held that the FAA could not reclassify Alaska guide-pilot package flights as commercial operations through a Federal Register notice because the change operated as a legislative rule; APA § 553 required notice-and-comment rulemaking, and the Notice was therefore invalid.


Alaska Pro. Hunters Ass’n, Inc. v. FAA, 177 F.3d 1030 (D.C. Cir. 1999)