US regulators are near to concluding that passenger jets with two engines are as safe as those with three or four engines and should have the same flexibility in flying long-distance routes, a report said on Monday.

The Federal Aviation Administration is nearing completion of rules that are expected particularly to benefit Boeing's twin-engine 777 airliner, The Wall Street Journal said.

The rules also are expected to benefit Boeing's strategy of building planes capable of flying passengers directly to their destinations without transferring through busy hub airports, the paper said, citing industry officials.

Twin-engine planes currently have to stay within 3-1/2 hours of an emergency landing strip while flying across wide expanses of ocean or polar terrain, the newspaper said.

Chet Ekstrand, a senior Boeing safety official, said on Friday that he does not expect the final regulations will have any changes of substance from a draft the FAA released in November 2003.

Officials from the FAA and Boeing rival Airbus declined to comment, the newspaper said.