Here's a question I raised earlier about Air Canada DC-8's configured to be operated with two pilots, no flight engineer. I saw a stretch-8 years ago with seat rails that would allow the FO to slide back to the FE panel and manipulate the levers and read the fuels. The idea was that they would take off with all the crossfeeds open and after 10000 feet the FO would periodically slide back and balance things out. A friend from Air Canada told me that several aircraft were modified but the union never bought off on the two-crew concept for the DC-8. The AC DC-8's were probably all freighters by then.
Or was my friend kidding me? I haven't been able to find a reference to the attempt to operate the DC-8 without an FE. Some DC-8's were give the 'microwave in a cave' glass cockpit conversion at places like UPS but they still had FE's.
Here's my earlier post about those claimed seat rails:
who still has flight engineers?