fuselage, central portion of the body of anairplane, designed toaccommodate the crew, passengers, and cargo. It varies greatly in design and size according to the function of the aircraft. In a jetfighter the fuselage consists of a cockpit large enough only for the controls and pilot, but in a jet airliner it includes a much larger cockpit as well as a cabin that has separate decks for passengers and cargo. The predominant types of fuselage structures are themonocoque (i.e., kind of construction in which the outer skin bears a major part or all of the stresses) andsemimonocoque. These structures provide better strength-to-weight ratios for the fuselage covering than the truss-type construction used in earlier planes.