Originally Posted by
Tandemrotor
A point of information if I may?
Specifying a retirement age for pilots, of 65 years. Is of course “discrimination”, and unarguably “deliberate”. However what it most definitely (currently) is NOT, is “unlawful”!
Indeed, quite the opposite is true. There are various protected characteristics. Only one of which is age. However, unlike all other protected characteristics, discrimination on the basis of age, most definitely CAN be legal. This is because certain Objective Justifications can be used to back up such things as compulsory retirement ages for certain professions. By all means research this if you are interested.
However, back to the above quote. It is actually the “current young ones” who ARE arguing to uphold the law. It is actually “the old one” seeking to change it. Having of course benefitted from the previous compulsory retirement of all his/her elders!
Which makes this quote rather interesting?
I couldn’t agree more!
In your "research" you've picked up totally the wrong end of all the sticks, I'm afraid! The unlawful age discrimination thing was done to death in the ATC forum years ago (at least as far as UK law was concerned). It is no different in the pilot age case. It has yet to be fully demonstrated (via test cases) that the current discrimination is lawful. In the ATC case the opposite was shown i.e. that discrimination against older ATC candidates was unlawful, and most tellingly, there was no appeal.