It's nice to keep old aircraft flying but I would not like to suffer the sad fate of the firefighters whose ageing Hercules came asunder in midair in 1994, and another in 2002. Or the crew of the Consolidated Vultee Privateer bomber which was built in 1944 and again, was converted to a firefighter. It was 58 years old when its left wing separated killing both pilots. What about the ancient Mallard amphibian whose wings collapsed shortly after take-off in Flordia a year or so back? All the fare paying passengers aboard were killed along with the crew.
Under the latest FAA proposals, an operator is obliged to start treating his aircraft as ageing when it may be as little as 11 years old. So it's a bit silly to say that the EU is ruining flying.