rogerg; are you sure about that? All my commercial life the retirement age ( the age at which the licence validity lapses) has been 65. Granted, lots of companies had a retirement age of 60, but that didn't prevent taking a position with one that didn't. In fact, my old company had the option for jet captains to transfer to turbo-prop captain at 60 if desired. No, it didn't clog the system, since mosts F.O.s wanted to transfer turbo RHS to jet RHS rather than turbo LHS. This new regulation would appear to create a gap where the licence is no longer valid, but the state pension is not available. I agree that the state pension isn't liveable, but some people, through no fault of their own, don't have any other option.