SMOE
One Lucky Bastard
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2003
- Posts
- 278
XTW said:They help to keep the two guys up front from killing everybody. It's the perfect place for an "unloaded" pilot to monitor the whole operation and get the "big" picture.
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XTW has the best summation of all. I was an FE for over 20 years and there's still several opportunities out there both in the military and civilian world. The only capacity replaced by computer has been system monitoring. I know several pilots that miss having a third set of eyeballs watching the show...
FE duties vary by airframe but largely they operate/monitor the aircraft systems and backup the pilots. A third set of eyes for the flight deck. My last tour was with the NATO E-3. The pilots got to fly the airplane...I ran it. Preflighted, started engines, ran the throttles (and flaps on touch and gos), ran all checklist, analyzed malfunctions/recommended/took appropriate corrective actions, operated/monitored aircraft systems, completed all takeoff, landing, and inflight performance data, calculated fuel endurance, holding, bingo.
There's a publication out there called "The Third Man". Its a brief history of the FE and a very interesting read. The FEs had their own union until the early 60s but ended up butting heads with ALPA and lost. That's why you now have pilots as SOs for a lot of outfits instead of Professional FEs.
Hope this helped...