I have never heard such a load of rubbish as propounded by LHR Rain's second post. Having got myself quite angry, I thought I had better put the story right when I noted that several other heavyweights had already come in on page two with similar thoughts. First a bit of history. The UK ATPL has been valid until the age of 65 for a good many years, although prior to the late 1980s you were restricted from flying anything over 20,000Kgs once you hit 60. i.e. turboprops like the F27, HS748, and Herald.
Around 1988 when the JAR licence was first being talked about and we were looking for a level platform (Huh!), the CAA FL Dept decided to start the ball rolling by removing the 20K restriction. They did add the rider that everyone would be responsible for obtaining their own individual permission to fly into a country's airspace and the bit about only one pilot on the flightdeck being over 60. Almost immediately they followed this with what they thought was going to be a great help to UK pilots. They wrote to all ICAO countries and asked them for blanket clearance for all UK pilots over 60 to overfly/ operate into their airspace!!
Nobody had really given it a thought until this point and UK over 60s had been flying commercially world wide on small corporate type aircraft for years without seeking any permission.
Countries sarted thinking about the problem and some (who had much earlier decided to stick with an age 60 limit on their ATPLs) could see The UK and others having a perceived advantage and said NO. CAA published lists of those who said YES, Maybe and NO. Apart from the USA we all know who led the NO field in Europe. Germany carried on giving permission to anybody by means of an individual permit - I still have mine. The battle has now been going on for 25 years. Unfortunately, virtually anyone flying south to the sun from UK has to cross France so it has hit us much harder than pther European countries.
Of course LHR Rain and others have got confused between "legal licence requirements" and State retirement rules with their associated pension issues. Believe me, French and Italian opposition to over 60 has nothing to do with their support for their pilots and everything to do with the age at which pensions are triggered - for all professions.
Traditionally, aviation pensions in the UK were set up to kick in at 60 (maybe because of the 20K weight restriction). If airline X didn't have any below 20K aircraft, pilots would have to retire at 60. BA as we know used 55 although I gather there is pressure to change this to 60 or more. What is fact is that in days of old i.e. 40 years plus ago there was little incentive for a 60 year old to retire at 60 and then look round for an airline that operated under 20K aircraft. For a start there weren't very many of them, remember the huge growth that there has been in our industry. Probably not much call for more than about a dozen oldies a year in the UK. As for the ethics of old preventing progress of the young, it really isn't a problem; the numbers looking for over 60 places is really a very small percentage of the pilot body in the UK