[QUOTE=Tandemrotor;10197342]
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!
Not necessarily. ..it would appear the legal challenge in this case is about what you describe as "objective justifications". If one is being objective,in this case, evidence from Chile New Zealand Australia Canada Japan and a few other countries show that there is no increase in incidents or accidents by "Professional Airline Pilots" over 65 in those countries. Studies done in the US measuring general aviation pilots up to the age of 79 which tested landing or not decisions in low vis in simulators confirms what we all "know" to be true .... that performance deteriorates with increasing age. The results were not uniform of course. There were very old pilots still making good decisions and younger pilots making bad decisions. All that shows that age is very poor indicator of performance. That probably means there is no objective justification in thus case meaning that it is discriminatory to enforce retirement using age as the primary determinant.