What exactly is "retirement age" anyway?
Licence privileges currently allow for commercial operations (aerial work type stuff notwithstanding) up until age 65.
Governments change state pension age to suit themsleves. When I started my career, state pension age for a man was 65. (At the time, licence privileges allowed commercial operations to age 60). For a woman it was 60. For me now though it's 66.75! My wife has seen a more drastic change.
Company pension schemes have had ages at which "full" benefit is available at some notional age anywhere between 55 and 65, and is subject to change by negotiation with the employees. Legislation passed by various UK governments over the last 10-15 years have though made the Company retirement age somewhat of a variable. An individual can take pension benefits on reaching age 55. The employer can't compel an individual to leave the Company on reaching some arbitrary age (due to Age Discrimination legislation). Only loss of licence privileges at 65 are the backstop. One thing is generally true though (subject to financial markets), the longer you pay in to your pension for, and the longer you leave it before taking benefits, the more valuable it will be.
Contracts of employment which referred to a retirement age have been trumped by more general legislation. Some folks got lucky, others maybe not so.
What individuals have to grasp is that "retirement" is now a much more fluid concept than it used to be.
Edited to add:
My company doesn't exist any more. However, over the last 10 years or so hardly anyone "retired" because they had reached their 60th birthday. It was usually some event like fleet retirement/base closure/medical issue/divorce/bereavement etc that prompted them to leave the company. Sometimes they were already over 60; usually not. Sometimes they put their company pension in to payment, sometimes not straight away. Sometimes they got another job, sometimes commercial flying, occasionally something else.
I think I can say though that no one left so that they would create a vacancy for a younger person...
Last edited by 36050100; 2nd Apr 2020 at 13:30.
Reason: Additional content