Originally Posted by
Bob Lenahan
Along about 1958, or before, if not later, United decided to eliminate Flight Engineers- well they all had to get a commercial pilots license. Do you think that United management thought, or knew, that two-man crews were coming in the future? Is that why they did that?
It wasn't just United that was going to the all pilot flight deck in the late 1950's. Delta with the support of ALPA hired pilots and trained them as flight engineers much to the chagrin of the professional flight engineer's union FEIA. During the 1958 FEIA strike at Eastern Delta kept flying and took advantage of Eastern's chronic labor woes once again.
From
Flying the Line: The First Half Century of the Airline Pilots Association retired Delta Captain Stewart Hopkins gives this perspective as a former ALPA official:
FEIA had a parade of witnesses, and they were trying to make something bigger out of the flight engineer’s job than it really was. My god, you’d think a flight engineer had to have a Ph.D. in engineering! FEIA embarked on a consistent policy of mystifying the flight engineer’s function, and it led directly to a conflict over authority in the cockpit. What it boiled down to was we put a monkey back there on the panel, and when we turned around he was King Kong.
The full text of
Flying the Line is published by ALPA here:
https://www.alpa.org/-/media/ALPA/Fi...ol-1.pdf?la=en
Legacy language in airline contracts to retrain profession flight engineers was around until a little over a decade ago at some carriers I believe. In years past I've been a dues paying member of both ALPA and FEIA.
Will these crew compliment battles be fought again as the feds and the manufacturers explore the concept of single pilot airliners? Will there be an automation clause in future airline contracts to protect pilots who lose their seats to new technology?
It's coming:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/20/boei...-on-board.html