I think there's a little mis-comparison going on here. Those who worked for companies with early retirement ages, such as 55 at BA and 60 at VA, tended to have rather generous final salary pensions or had private pensions that matured in the heydays before the financial collapse (my father gets every month what I can look forward to annually, such is the decline in private pension performance). As for those who say that the shortfall was known before the career was chosen, that is only true for those who took it up within the last couple of years - 65 has been a retirement age and pension qualifier for several decades now.