Modern Russian Jetliners
 

I can't be the first one to notice that many modern Russian transport category glass cockpit aircraft still carry a flight engineer. Any opinions on this? Do you think it's a help or hindrance? Is it just a hangover from Soviet times where a job was a job for life or is it a smart allocation of resources and manpower to facilitate task management? The Antonov cargo giants from the 1980's, many of which are still running carry a crew of at least 6, but they're built that way.

The Soviets/Russia/CIS have always got the butt end of a lot of jokes for being technologically, well not so much undeveloped as - unstylishly functional but sometimes I think they're smarter than they get credit for it that sense. At the end of the day, no industry will pay people to do a job if they don't feel it needs to be done.

Why would an engineer p, probably a mechanic be a hindrance? My FEs on the 727 were PFEs with A&Ps. Great asset to have on the jet:ok:

I guess one good reason might be they don't sell to airlines dominated by accountants.

Lets face it the only reason the western world has two crew on the flight deck is because it's legislated for. If a western aircraft manufacturer thought they could certify a jetliner with one pilot they would as they know all the accountant dominated airlines would buy them in a instant.

Can not argue that the more eyes in the cockpit the better.

They don't sell to 'anybody' period - I mean their commercial aircraft industry is so tiny it doesn't count. If not for Sukhoi-100 all their civilian transport category aircraft made in 2014 could be counted on two hands. SSJ-100 is their only real seller, by the way Sukhoi-100 has a cockpit crew of two - because this is what (real) customers expect and Thales provided avionics to make it possible. 97% of all aircraft operated today by Russian airlines are western made.

It definitely doesn't help. Whether it is any significant hindrance - probably doesn't matter since their aircraft are so noncompetitive in many other ways.

virtually all russian/soviet cargo planes were initially designed for military use and were built according to the air force specs. It is well known that the military goes rather for well proven and reliable solutions where the cost factor is rather unimportant. If it works, it works. And it's improves redunancy, too. At least according to the army point of view.

The Tupolev Tu-204 has a two person flight deck.
The Antonov An-148 and An-158 which are technically Ukranian designs but whose production factory is in Russia, also have two person flight decks.

I suspect the IL-96 stuck with its multi crew flight decks because of the way the earlier models were certified, themselves an evolution and upgrade of the even older Il-86, which were certified with multi-crew.

A bit the same reason why current production B-737NG have no EICAS or ECAM....
Boeing 747-300 with F/Es were being delivered at the same time as early B-767s that had two man crews. The first two man crew 747-400 was delivered 6 years after the introduction of the two man crew 767.....