Although the FunBus is indeed 'somdeel stape in age', as its birth contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer might well have observed, it is not the fact that the aircraft is being retired which grates, it is the fact that a 4-person flight deck aircraft flown professionally and safely is now being regulated by cover-my-arse idiots as though it was some bottom-feeders' lo-co 737 being flown by the cheapest crew who can be dredged out of the gutters of the airline world.
Sure it's an old jet well overdue for replacement. If this policy is some clever Airships' ploy to protect the FSTA and A400M programmes, there might be some merit in it. But I fear that 'clever Airship' is nowadays an oxymoron....