Quote: "Certainly many of the Flight Engineers at Virgin Atlantic went on to be pilots when VS phased out the classics."
Not as I remember it. Most of the Classics in VS went in a knee jerk reaction after 9/11 when the fleet was scrapped overnight. All of those FEs went with them. It was a cull and done without compassion. A couple of them learned about their unemployed state by ACARS - I kid you not! Two of the Classics subsequently continued on operating out of MAN when it was discovered that the knee jerk was too extreme. They were operated with TF registrations under Air Atlanta's AOC. Twenty four of the Classic pilots were retained on the fleet, but many of the FEs on those MAN flights were from Air Atlanta to add insult to injury.
A couple of VS FEs became pilots, but not as a result of the scrapping of the Classic fleet. At the time, the company was shedding pilots as well, so there was no interest in training the FEs to change seats.
Quite a few of those FEs subsequently joined KA. As one of them mentioned to me, it was handy that the FE seniority list was on a separate page in the Ops Manual. To amend your copy, you simply had to tear the page out!