AVIATION: Rx from Rick

What's wrong with the airlines? They're too pampered. That is what hard-jawed Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, president of profitable Eastern Air Lines Inc., told the Senate Committee on Interstate & Foreign Commerce last week.

"Air transportation," said Rickenbacker, "is suffering from too much coddling and wet-nursing. More regulation and paternalism are not the cure. The individual carriers need less artificial support, less shielding from the facts of life, and more exposure to the inexorable economic laws that apply to business in general." Rick, who pinches Eastern's pennies until Lincoln's beard hurts, thought the...