before I started flying I worked at one time for the inland revenue superannuation funds office (SF0) later the Pensions Schemes office (PSO), although I admit that this was a long time ago (1986-87 actually)
one of the things i did was to approve the rules of new pension schemes as well as rule changes to existing schemes.
as part of this role, approval of 'low normal retirement ages" was common for various employee sectors, who could not normally expect to work to the standard normal retirement age.
for example i approved some low normal retirement ages of 35 for some famous footballers of the day.
the only thing i can't remember is whether this was allowed as a sub section within the existing scheme or if it required a new sub scheme.
it seems to me that the problem here is that when the pilots were first employed as a group that no one took ownership of the task of securing a normal pension age of 60 for the pilot group.
this may have been due to a lack of pilot representation (BALPA membership) i don't know. or may have simply been because no one ever asked and spent energy arguing about interpretation of existing rules rather than getting the rules changed or a sub scheme started.
my knowledge of the former SFO policy is that a change from 65 to 60 should have been no problem at all given the licensing issues that created the problem.
Last edited by Camp Freddie; 5th Nov 2013 at 02:10.