232
Opinion of the Court
The United States maintains that the DOT has neither the authority nor the apparatus required to superintend a contract dispute resolution regime. See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 22. Prior to airline deregulation, the CAB set rates, routes, and services through a cumbersome administrative process of applications and approvals. 72 Stat. 731. When Congress dismantled that regime, the United States emphasizes, the lawmakers indicated no intention to establish, simultaneously, a new administrative process for DOT adjudication of private contract disputes. See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 22. We agree.
Nor is it plausible that Congress meant to channel into federal courts the business of resolving, pursuant to judicially fashioned federal common law, the range of contract claims relating to airline rates, routes, or services. The ADA contains no hint of such a role for the federal courts. In this regard, the ADA contrasts markedly with the ERISA, which does channel civil actions into federal courts, see ERISA §§ 502(a), (e), 29 U. S. C. §§ 1132(a), (e), under a comprehensive scheme, detailed in the legislation, designed to promote "prompt and fair claims settlement." Pilot Life Ins. Co. v. Dedeaux, 481 U. S. 41, 54 (1987); see Ingersoll-Rand Co. v. McClendon, 498 U. S. 133, 143-145 (1990) (finding ERISA's comprehensive civil enforcement scheme a "special feature" supporting preemption of common-law wrongful discharge claims).
The conclusion that the ADA permits state-law-based court adjudication of routine breach-of-contract claims also makes sense of Congress' retention of the FAA's saving clause, § 1106, 49 U. S. C. App. § 1506 (preserving "the remedies now existing at common law or by statute"). The ADA's preemption clause, § 1305(a)(1), read together with the FAA's saving clause, stops States from imposing their own substantive standards with respect to rates, routes, or services, but not from affording relief to a party who claims and proves that an airline dishonored a term the airline itself
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