Hidden Agenda,
You say “it would be lovely if an engineer was available to do it before every flight”. So presumably you agree with me that when maintenance personnel are required to be available to conduct a daily inspection, that it is acceptable to let them get on with the pre-flight check simultaneously, and then not repeat the task?
Er, no - what I'm saying is that if we had an engineer to do the daily check every day then, whilst he was doing it, I could get on with the paperwork, briefing etc, and get the aircraft online quicker - increasing the availability for the customer, (ie - the bobby on the ground). The downside, for the engineer, is that being a single aircraft, single base operation, once the daily check has been done, what does he/she do for the rest of the day??
If I have not done the daily check then the pre-flight is still my responsibility - I'm the one getting airborne in it.