Because in the beginning, there were FE's who were professional FE's only and not pilots. Then there were FE's like me who were pilots who eventually upgraded to F/O's and even some retired Captains who came back as FEs. But there were huge numbers of FE's who were only professional FE's, especially on the 727's (100 and 200s, etc.). As that part of the fleet went, so did they. But at UAL, there were also pilots who began as FE's and then after a time worked their way up to the right seat and that happened on the 707, 727, DC-8 and DC-10. This is how many pilots with them started their careers at many mainline carriers back in the 70's and that continued for a very long time. And like I said, some Captains retired because of the age limit but came back to their own or other airlines as an FE only, just to continue working and flying. They of course could no longer pilot because of the age rule. And some of the guys who were professional FE's were like 69 and 70 years old when the last of the 727's went. I have even heard of guys past 70 working as FEs for foreign carriers. After 9/11, the last days of three seats really went away.
I remember the 4-stripers who were past age 60 and reverted back to the FE seat where they could fly until age 64. That was one of the ones who gave me a little grief on a UAL DC-10, checking my name against his scab list when I was checking in to jumpseat.
The pilots who started at the FE panel, those were titled as Second Officers, right? Or were the PFEs considered the same?
In the old days the professional FE's were also full power plant mechanics who could perform and assist in repairs. They could sign off on repairs also and help perform them and supervise them at out stations. In flight, they monitored all the electrical, hydraulics, pressurization, the on board air flow, the engines, all the indicators and gauges for those systems, manged the fuel burn and kept the log sheets, etc.
Back when my Father was flying for UAL, there was a big lawsuit brought against the company over the FE/Second Officer issue. The union for the FE's (FEIA) brought about the change that FEs did not have to be pilots to work there and could remain as FEs only and they won.
The flight engineers and seniority lists, that was a whole other mess from hell. There was actually a lawsuit about that in 62 or 61 brought on by FEIA. ALPA was not happy over this. It became mandated by the courts that the 700 and some UAL FE's be merged into the pilots list, all of them. (flying and non flying) . Then another suit was brought on later in the 60's when Capital merged with UAL because all the Capital FE's were required by Capital to be certified pilots where at UAL, they weren't required. ALPA and UAL were found in/by the courts of having drawn up seniority lists without the CAB approval and leaving the Capital FE's at the bottom of the dog pile. UAL management and APLA screwed the FE's together in drawing up the terms of what "pilot" meant and when seniority would start. At the time, the UAL FE's who were pilots were already integrated in the the main pilots seniority list because of the previous action. What followed for the Capital FEs was some incredibly complicated and unfair system that was finally hashed out about which of the Capital FE's would be integrated into the pilots list and which would be tossed on the bottom of the list. It wasn't pretty.
So the PFEs were their own union, and the Second Officer FEs (pilot rated ones) were ALPA. But did the PFEs that never became pilots ever merge into ALPA?
Were there any leftover Flight Navigators in management or anything like that when you showed up at UAL? I ask, because one of the CFIs at ERAU who was there when Doug and I were there was a former TWA Flight Navigator on the L-1049/1649 and 707.
