When I was scrounging around for jobs in General Aviation the bane of my life was old Air Force pukes who had retired on a nice, fat government pension plus cheap stuff from the PX, health care and all that sort of stuff civilians in low-paying jobs could only dream about. They formed an immovable layer of scum in many GA companies, willing to work for peanuts just to fill in a few more lines in the log book plus crapping from a great height on low-life, civilian-trained beginners who presumed to think that anyone not ex-Air Force might have also have a place in aviation.
You might just have a point about age discrimination, come to that. Remove the 'Age 60' rule and open the floodgates to that! Eek! Okay, okay, I go sell garage door openers.