Right now, if you want (or have to) fly from major US city A to major US city B you do that by flying with an intermediate stop at O'Hell Airport in between. This is called the hub system. The nuns who taught me in grade school would call it temporal punishment for sin. (I first saw O'Hell used as a reference to a certain airport near Chicago by Art Buchwald. But Buchwald was wrong -- there are worse airports elsewhere.) Now that Airbus thinks that international travel will pick up in the future, do they encourage airlines to fly point to point between major international cities? Of course not. When you could fly from major US city to major European city non-stop, Airbus develops the Fat Albert plane that has you fly: US city to O'Hell (US) to O'Hell (Europe) to European city. This is double hub, prohibited I think <tongue in cheek>, by the Unified Code of Military Justice. (Fat Albert comes from a Bill Cosby comedy routine from the 60's). Airbus, like Boeing, ought to ask what is the "next big thing." The next big thing is not huge. Rather, it is likely to be either a very fuel efficient plane (Boeing does have brains; it just doesn't use them) or an economical SST. john John Kurtzke, C.S.C. Department of Mathematics University of Portland Portland OR 97203 503-943-7377