The Future Is a Flying Fortress : After the terror, aircraft regulators and manufacturers begin planning the 'post-Sept. 11 airplane'.(Abstract)(Brief Article)

The world's largest jetliner is being redesigned so that it won't become the world's largest suicide bomb. On the drawing board long before Sept. 11, Airbus's double-decker A380 will be much larger than the Boeing 767s that took down the towers of the World Trade Center, and the first of these superjumbos is due for delivery to airlines in 2006. Last week Philippe Camus, co-CEO of EADS, the European defense firm and parent of Airbus, said engineers were already rethinking the A380. "It will be a post-Sept. 11 airplane," he vowed.

So will every other new jetliner. One previously unimaginable consequence of Sept. 11 is that every commercial plane must now be seen as a potential weapon. The catastrophe has regulators and aircraft manufacturers scrambling to foil terrorists. U.S. airlines are installing steel bars behind ...