They're gone! No, they're back! Wassup?
I must declare an interest in this, having reached the advanced age of 57 as a fixed-wing aviator, with official Company retirement age being 58. This focusses the mind somehow.
I just met at least one guy returning to work who had, indeed, been let go due to age, so that he was forced to join another operator for less pay and, arguably, worse conditions. It would seem that a looming pilot shortage brought about a change of heart, so that he has been re-hired as a contractor.
I think/hope that there may be a change of policy coming. On the balance of things, probably not soon enough to help me, but one of these days....
As noted, the Age 60 Rule was brought in way back when by Elwood Queseda (I think), a retired USAF general heading up the FAA at the time. There was absolutely no scientific basis for the rule even then. It just sounded good, to retire pilots five years before normal people.
It wasn't as if there were any statistics that showed older guys to be a higher accident risk. (In fact, accidents seem to cluster around two experience levels, low-time and about 1, 500 flight hours, when one first knows nothing and one then thinks one knows it all. After that one usually becomes older and wiser, and safer. There is the odd guy who falls down dead, but the numbers are so low it's statistically insignificant relative to age 60.)
On the other hand the rule cleared out a lot of older, higher-paid guys so that it was generally popular. At that time there were relatively few pilot jobs with the (regulated) major US airlines available, while low-cost and regional airlines had hardly been dreamed of, so that getting a seat at all and then upgrading to command were two very difficult things.
Nowadays everything has changed, except the Age 60 Rule. Part of the problem might be that changing the rule would be seen as an admission that it was some sort of mistake in the first place. The FAA seems to have a big problem with losing face.