I can only speak for the NHS but the advice you have been given would be spot on in the NHS
If you stop working you no longer make contributions. If you take your pension and it is before the normal retirement age it is reduced on an actuarial basis. Your alternative is not to take it but freeze it until the normal retirement age but that leaves you nothing to live on.
Certain occupations are allowed to retire early - psychiatrists retire at 55 but other doctors have to wait until 60. However when all this was set up there were no pilots
In the NHS doctors who can't work as doctors press their employer to give them alternative work. It is usually pushing pieces of paper round a desk and the employer soon caves in at the cost or the hassle and makes the individual redundant.