Hmmm. Wing Commanders are notorious for asking silly questions and winding people up, but this one isn't too silly to be worthy of an answer.
'Engineer' is now widely recognised as a title reserved to professionally qualified engineers holding a degree in engineering, plus a significant amount of post-graduate experience and development. The men and women who maintain our aircraft are mostly non-graduates trained to a level of technical knowledge guaranteed by examination. In the case of the engineering profession this defines them as technicians.
Internationally, maintenance work carried out on aircraft must be certified as meeting accepted airworthiness standards. In Britain those technicians who may legally certify aircraft maintenance work hold an 'Aircraft Maintenance Engineers Licence' issued after examination by the CAA. Hence, they are referred to as Licenced Aircraft Maintenance Engineers - Licenced Engineers or LAEs for short. In the USA, aircraft maintenance technicians holding Airframe and Powerplant Mechanics Licences are generally referred to as A & P Mechanics but they are broadly similar to LAEs and may also be considered as technicians.
With the UK adoption of JARs, the old style of licence is being discontinued and replaced by 'JAR 66' A, B1, B2 and C technician's licences and henceforth those previously known as Licenced Engineers or LAEs will be referred to as Licenced Technicians.
The odd point here is that even professionally qualified engineers may not legally certify maintenance work carried out on an aircraft unless they hold a licence to do so. Thus it is now possible to be both an "Engineer" and a "Licenced Technician" at the same time. [In fact it is just a matter of time before we hear from one in this thread. Ghengis, where are you?] Meanwhile, in the USA it is possible to be both an "Engineer" and a "Mechanic" at the same time.
Assuming that as a Wing Commander you are British or at least Commonwealth based, you can find out more about becoming a technician or an engineer at the following websites:
<a href="http://www.justengineers.net/links-institutes.html" target="_blank">http://www.justengineers.net/links-institutes.html</a>
<a href="http://www.engc.org.uk" target="_blank">http://www.engc.org.uk</a>
and, since you are posting on PPRuNe and thus obviously interested in aviation, you can find out about aircraft technician's licencing at:
<a href="http://www.srg.caa.co.uk/pld/eld/eld_information.asp" target="_blank">http://www.srg.caa.co.uk/pld/eld/eld_information.asp</a>
Good luck in your future career, Wing Commander.
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Through difficulties to the cinema