Retirement Ages
 

Can the following countries' controllers kindly post the age at which one must retire or when one's license no longer becomes valid due to an age limitation in your countries' jurisdictions.

U.K.
Denmark
Eurocontrol
FAA (USA)
Australia
New Zealand
South Africa
France
Germany
Spain

Thanks

Eurocontrol has an ETS (early termination of service) agreement which sees you leave at 55. You can apply to stay on up to 2 years I think (not many people want to :) ) and official retirement comes at 57 or 58. Although this agreement is only valid for controllers joining before a certain date and will have to be renegotiated at some stage in the future - which some of the younger controllers don't know!!

As I understand it, there is no mandatory retirement age for ATCOs in the UK, thanks to the EU Age Discrimination legislation which came into force late last year. So long as you have a valid CAA Medical Cert., you can carry on working as an ATCO. Competence and the ability to survive night shifts may be another matter... I know of one UK ATCO who was still working as a valid ATCO well into his late 60s. The age at which you are deemed to have reach Pension entitlement varies with employers.

retirement age
 

In France ( Civil servant organisation) :
Mandatory : 57

You can ask to leave at 50 but with a (very) reduced pension scheme.
To have a full scheme (on your basic salary), you should have paid for your pension during 37,5 years for ATCOs born until 1950, then it is moving up by law to 40 years by an annual increment of 6 month for the next 5 years.

Where I work in the UK (busy non NATS Aerodrome with links to local goverment pension scheme) the earliest I (early 40's) can retire is now 60! With reduced pension until I am 63! :uhoh:

Only other way out is medically:eek:

I work with a valid ATCO who is 73.
He could be the oldest valid UK ATCO. out of interest, any advance on 73?

An ex-Heathrow colleague of mine who more recently worked at the Isles of Scilly must be heading 70ish..

How old was "Ash" Ashburner at Sywell when he retired??

If you mean TW I think he is still working at St Marys and must be a contender. Ash must have been nearly 80 when he stopped A/G at Sywell. Was it ever ATC there? He couldn't have seen much through all those tomato plants.....

In the US, FAA, mandatory retirement at 56. You can ask for a waiver, but I have never seen anyone recieve one. Management can work longer. Alot of controllers go to work for contract towers or groups ( WCG ) with ATC training contracts if they still want to work as an ATCS or in the field. Controllers hired in 81-85 are just starting to hit this number if they were close to 30 when hired. Alot of the controllers hired then were 21 to 25 so the mandatory age will not be an issue for a while.

There was a chap called Frank who was working at Booker in 1995 who was 74 - and still flew the odd spitfire too - I don't know when he stopped though as I left about then

louby

I think Frank W has stopped Wycombe now. I think the medical was a bit difficult to hold down. I'll ask him his age when he stopped ATCOing when I see him. He must've been operational close to 80. He's still about, full of stories and fun, used to fly for the AEF. I worked with him at the Centre back in the seventies.

I'm 252 Malc.

ATC Call Signs - Albion etc.
 

I worked for Northeast as we used "Norjet" and with the formation of British Airways Regional the callsign changed to "Albion" and then later when the Viscounts went and HS.748's and jet only fleet to "Speedbird" - correct me if I am wrong.:cool: