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Apologies for being so broad in the title but this will consist of a couple of questions in one.

As I'm sure most of use are aware modern commercial aircraft being manufactured no longer incorporate a flight engineer, this role - as far as I know - has been taken over by onboard systems monitored by the pilots.

Obviously there are a number of airlines out there flying older aircraft that do require a flight engineer, which airlines still actively hire F/E's? Do airlines still train people for this position or purely rely on hiring people already trained? I'm thinking more along the thought process here of 'When the older F/E's retire, how are they replaced?'

Finally, what happened to the F/E's when this job was phased out? Were they retrained as pilots? Merged into an office job? Flat out dropped from the company?

user1352057
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    Related: As 727s retire, so do their flight engineers and Flight Engineer - A Dying Breed – RedGrittyBrick Jul 11 '14 at 10:09
  • Asking multiple questions in a single question is considered bad form on the Stack Exchange network. Also, at least "which airlines still actively hire flight engineers?" is a list question, which in itself is a poor fit for Stack Exchange as it is difficult to provide a single, authoritative answer to it (never mind that the answer will change over time). At the very least, consider asking each subquestion separately; even though they all deal with the flight engineer role, they are separate questions and should be treated as such. – user Jul 11 '14 at 11:02
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    @MichaelKjörling Once the list question has been discarded, I think there are two questions here: how do airlines currently meet their flight engineer needs? and what happened to flight engineers as that role disappeared? Most of the subsidiary questions (Did they become pilots? Did they get office jobs? Were they just made redundant?) are essentially yes-no questions that couldn't stand on their own anyway. – David Richerby Jul 11 '14 at 12:09
  • @DavidRicherby I see basically "which airlines still actively hire F/Es?", "do airlines train F/Es?", and "what happened to past F/Es?". There are at least two separate questions there, "how do airlines gain flight engineer expertise currently?" and "as the flight engineer role became less and less needed, how did airlines respond to that?", which IMO are different questions. (That said, I'm not an aviation expert, just a fairly-long-time SE member, so maybe I'm in the wrong here. That's why I wrote "consider" in my original comment.) – user Jul 11 '14 at 12:14
  • @RedGrittyBrick Many thanks for your great reply. That information pretty much covered everything I was asking. If you could post your answer then I will mark it as the correct one. – user1352057 Jul 12 '14 at 20:38
  • I heard of an engineer from New Zealand taking a course in USA back in 2006 to gain the F/E qualification on a Boeing 727, so apparently it can still be done. I imagine the flight training centres in USA which specialise in flight simulator based type certs must still teach it. – user2357 Jul 19 '14 at 23:48
  • SIR PIA ARE STILL OPERATING THE B747 367 AND OPERATING FLIGHT ENGINEERS ON THESE TYPES. FROM RAYHAN AHMED (CARGO AIRCRAFT LOADER) – RAYHAN ahmed Jan 28 '15 at 18:19
  • Couple years Pakistan airlines came in with a B747 367 AP BGG (heathrow)once we pushing the aiecraft it developed engine problems. I thing no 3 or 2 engine was not starting up due to fuel pump defect . it took many minutes for the flight engineer to start the engine. we thought the capt might bring the aircraft back on stand but due the flight engineer they managed to relight the engine and taxy off. Having a human being attending to a defect is much better then a computer like what they have on - 400. From RAYHAN Ahmed (cargo aircraft loader) – RAYHAN ahmed Jan 28 '15 at 18:30
  • Otherwise without the flight engineer at time we would have to offload all cargo pallets containers and maybe it would stayed overnight or the hanger. From RAYHAN Ahmed (cargo aircraft loader) – RAYHAN ahmed Jan 28 '15 at 18:35
  • Note PIA are going to retire there flight engineers on final phase of the -367 which going to replaced by 777. – RAYHAN ahmed Jan 28 '15 at 18:40
  • This will be in 2015. This is a real shame. – RAYHAN ahmed Jan 28 '15 at 18:41

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