BusyB,
I guess the 50 yr old was experienced and skilled enough to avoid an emergency with 400 people behind him!!!
I saw that one coming at me when I typed up my last reply, but decided not to muddy the waters by including a caveat. For the purpose of this discussion, can we assume that despite experience and skill, events can conspire to catch out the best of us, no matter what we do. While I take your point, it may also be the case that relative inexperience may cause a less experienced pilot to think twice where an older head might carry on, and trust blindly in his/her abilities to extricate themselves from a deteriorating situation.
I suppose I should clarify that I am not against older pilots, that is not my point at all.
Flyingsand, thanks for the backup. Again though, I stress my point is not really about whether 25 with 1500 hours is enough for command. My problem is with those who would slag off someone who has been deemed competent enough to take up a command. If this is a real issue, then the regulations should state that command age should be greater than 30, or whatever age/hours combination you choose.
The fact of the matter is that no such limitation exists, so tut-tutting the FR's of this world is all well and good, but frankly those that do so look to me more like the muppet characters Faire d'income has posted above, passing comment from the sidelines without being willing to debate the issue on it's own merit.