Milt,
I'm not sure if the benefits of reduced stability made possible in fighter-size aircraft through the introduction of FBW will actually be allowed to be realised in commercial airliners.
The trouble being that an unstable aircraft is very difficult to fly manually, and whereas it is "acceptable" to loose a fighter because there is no "realistic" manual reversionary system when the FBW system fails, I can't see the loss of a future unstable FBW passenger aircraft with however many souls onboard being palatable (no matter how low the reliability numbers work out to be).
Not sure how the Airbus family of aircraft work in this respect, do they still have a SSLP (suitable system of levers and pulleys) to connect the pilot to the control surfaces ??
T