<<Whats a flight engineer ?>>
A flight deck crew member who occupies the seat behind the pilots. In brief his or her duties include inflight aircraft systems management, but perhaps as importantly flight path monitoring when company SOP's include the integrated flight crew concept. F/E's usually carry some maintenance approval which can enable them to keep the show on the road if no engineering cover is available.
Not So Fantastic makes the point that he has never once missed the F/E since operating on a two crew aircraft. That is not my experience. I have found that in a two crew environment, particularly when operating with a very inexperienced F/O the opinion of a professional F/E would be very useful; never more so than when the workload has increased due to technical problems. Also from a CRM viewpoint the F/E can be very useful in resolving a difference of opinion between the two pilots.
My opinions may have some bias in that for many years I operated as an F/E. Removing the F/E means that I still sometimes have to eat the chicken!
Regards
Exeng