McDonnell Douglas recently ruled out building a new commercial jet in St. Louis, a program that might eventually have employed 8,000 workers.

Since 1995, Boeing has shelved two plans to build a bigger jet, concluding that the number of planes it could sell did not justify the expense.

But the company said late last night that it had no immediate plans to build such a jet and called the newspaper's report "overstated and out of context."

Then we'd be, you know, very solemn, and someone would say we ought to build a jet, or a submarine, or a TV set.

It is the home of the Eclipse project by former Microsoft executives seeking to build a low-cost personal jet.

They are forced to land on Pluto, in the hope of finding a deposit of some refractory metal they can use to build a new jet.

His company, Eclipse Aviation, based in Albuquerque, has built a six-seat jet that will sell for $1.3 million.

Boeing has held talks with its Japanese suppliers about jointly building a small jet that would hold about 80 passengers.

"You might have three companies that need new jetliners at the same time, and we'll be the only company actually building a jet," Mr. Polone concludes.

Deep in the Australian outback, a Japanese team took a small step forward on Monday in its plan to build a supersonic commercial jet.