The various young guns above are understandably upset, I would feel no different in their shoes. Reality is sometimes a pill too hard to swallow and even if you manage without throwing up, now and then life actually does treat you unfair undeservedly.
I think these are actual facts:
The only fair method of choosing who to let go is a random pick.
LIFO as the sole criterion is illegal.
The beancounters are responsible to the owners for the future well-being of the company, in line with the owner's wishes.
If a hypothetical base captain's choice is 50% professional and 50% personal vendetta, you'd still get half of the weakest links out of the company. I am genuinely hoping to hear about any other methods that actually do exist within the present-day EU legal framework which would produce better results.