Talk:Flight engineer/Archives/2012

THE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN FLIGHT ENGINEER

For a better, more detailed description of the flight engineer, see the attached blog. It should be noted that the flight engineer does not function as a mechanic, this is a common misconception. The flight engineer does not repair the aircraft when away from home base, this would be impractical at best since he would not be dressed for maintenance work nor would he have the tools required. The flight engineer's true benefit is not realized until there is an in-flight emergency.

http://denny-soaring.blogspot.com/2006/11/american-flight-engineer.html

The following is the story of my life as a flight engineer.

http://denny-soaring.blogspot.com/

dharm0n@aol.com 71.127.19.79 23:15, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Tried to add a reference to my edit for flight engineer duties (see the edit page) but I got a cite error. Not sure how to do it properly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sunsetlane (talk • contribs) 20:05, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Space Flight

Mission Specialist links here, I think there should be some info about FE's role in space flight. 84.144.37.193 16:17, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

a flight engineer

Gregory Chamitoff is a flight engineering as per this video. Linking to him may improve the article. He on the ISS I believe. Emesee (talk) 01:35, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

The capitalisation of the Title of this wiki entry "Flight engineer" is incorrect it should be "Flight Engineer".

In some arilines the F.E. was referred to as the Flight Engineer Officer or F.E.O, The "officer" tag was to stress to non flight deck personnel that the F.E.O had authority on the Flight Deck and of the aircraft, my point is that the Wiki title for this entry should be "Flight Engineer / Flight Engineer Officer", this would be more correct than current.

As there are three categories of Flight Engineer, Fixed Wing, Helicopters and Space, this current wiki entry should reflect that the Flight Engineers duties relates to Fixed Wing aircraft only. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.212.142.40 (talk) 04:35, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

This article has some very severe problems with historical accuracy. Flight Engineers became "Second Officers" as a result of the jurisdictional strike by PAN AM Flight Engineers in 1961. It spread to other airlines too and revolved around the transition from the older 4-engine piston driven airliners, to the new jets. ALPA wanted three pilots in the cockpit, but the FE union demanded they could not replace the FEs. The older, piston-engine FEs were required to have A&P licenses, but not pilot licenses. They actually did make repairs to planes during flight in the "olden days." They often crawled out into the wings of the flying boat clippers and such, to take care of oil leaks and other problems that occurred in flight. You can find much of the details about the jurisdictional strike at this Link.

It finally got resolved so that the airlines weren't forced to keep 4 crewmembers in the cockpit of the new jetliners. Instead, they had three licensed pilots (that usually belonged to ALPA), and the third man also had to have an FAA Flight Engineers' certificate. ALPA agreed to accept them into its union if they went out and got a pilot's license. The airlines agreed to pay for that additional training in single-engine Cessnas or Pipers.

The article also is off-based by asserting that "Western" flight engineers always worked with the Captain on an emergency, while the FO did the flying. That is but one way a problem could be handled in flight. There are other ways too and it was not cast in stone in the SOP procedures. Both pilots would normally be involved in the sharing of flying tasks---one actually manipulates the controls, while the other handles the radio and sets up approach procedures and works on some checklists, etc. The article needs drastic re-writing and of course valid WP:RS citations to support the statements. EditorASC (talk) 05:09, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

The article states, "The basic philosophy of a three man, etc..." basic to me implies that not everyone complied and that some of the time there were deviations. Your statement holds true for the early era of jet flight where the quality of the SOP's was inadequate and deviation from the most basic of SOP's was standard. It was mostly a disorganised flight deck with regards to SOP's and management of the scenario with the Captain deciding on the fly when to "take over" flying, several had such huge egos that they would disregard even the most basic of SOP's and try to do everything themselves. Sadly it took the Tenerife accident between two B747's, KLM and PAN AM, to highlight the severe deficiencies in utilisation of human knowledge on the flight deck and lack of crystal clear SOP's i.e. the exact duties of PF and PNF. The accident investigators highlighted the autocratic behaviour and management styles of the KLM Captain as a primary reason for this accident, what this accident also highlighted was the "authoritarian gradient" between the most experienced to least experienced crew members on the flight deck. After this accident it became evident that this authoritarian gradient had to be removed and that the captain had to listen and utilise all resources available in order to come to a more informed decision which could save lives. To get the Captain and more experienced crew members to utilise all the human knowledge around them the commercial airlines introduced a specific training program called "Crew Resource Management" (CRM), United was one of the early adopters of the "New" way of crew resource management. Some commercial airlines then took this further and refined their SOP's to enhance safety by creating the Captain (PNF) and F/E pairing to resolve the issue whilst the F/O (PF) focused on flying the aeroplane, this was a extremely effective way of managing the human resources available and the abnormal/emergency scenarios, which greatly enhanced the success, efficiency, and the outcome of the abnormalities and emergencies. Even with the advent of CRM and a clear definition of the PF and PNF duties there are still those head strong individuals that deviate from SOP's and make selections themselves instead of calling for the selection as per SOP, what these solo individuals don't realise is that the work load of the PNF increases each time they deviate from SOP's because now the PNF has to double check that a selection has actually been been done, which distracts the PNF from his normal duties thereby increasing his workload. For some the SOP's are written by Frank Sinatra - "I Did It My Way". Ego's are a bitch to reprogram, always were always will be, hence the need for "CRM", and SOP's, especially with regards to PNF and PF selections and duties which ensure a smooth and efficient execution of flight deck duties without any tension or unnecessary double checking.

Terminology and Ospreys

The term Aircraft implies a craft which flies hence there are different types of aircraft. Aircraft types are then further differentiated by category, so it's necessary to be specific as to which aircraft is being specified, fixed wing aircraft are AEROPLANES and not airplanes (slang) but it is a TYPE of aircraft, hope I've made that clear enough.

The Osprey CV-22 aircraft does not have a flight engineers panel, never has and never will, it's technically a hybrid between fixed wing and helicopter, helicopter flight engineers are NOT the same as aeroplane flight engineers, they NEVER were a integral part of the crew actually flying the aeroplane, so please remove the reference and image of the CV-22 osprey as it's not relevant to fixed wing aircraft.

it IS important to differentiate between a AIRCRAFT TYPE, hence my judicious and careful use of aeroplane and aircraft, but of course whom ever keeps reverting my changes at wikipedia knows better. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.136.76.117 (talk) 08:02, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I reverted some of your edits for several reasons, primarily because they were introducing grammatical errors into the article. Taking your points in turn:

• "Airplane" is definitely not slang; it is standard American English. Either "airplane" or "aeroplane" should be acceptable, as should "fixed-wing aircraft". Making wholesale changes to the terminology in an article without explaining them, either on the talk page or at least in an edit summary, raises red flags;
• If an Osprey crew doesn't include a flight engineer, then it's fine to remove the image. Please use an edit summary when removing an image;
• I don't "know better", but I do insist on standard grammar being used in article space, regardless of the topic. If it's just a typo or two, I'll gladly just fix them. Rivertorch (talk) 18:41, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

FE is the third in command

The article states: "On all commercial airliners with a Flight Engineer the FE is the third in command, after the captain and first officer." Is this true? Is this a legislation for a particular country, if so it needs to be specified. Many long haul flights operate with relief pilots, does the flight engineer rank above them? 2.120.33.250 (talk) 09:43, 28 March 2012 (UTC)