Compulsory retirement age of 65 for 'hire & reward'

[Fareastdriver]

I was lucky in my sixties. I was flying offshore in China with a Chinese endorsement to my CAA licence. It was considered then that I would stop at 60 and so I did. I flew some contract work as a F/O on return to the UK for about eighteen months and then I thought that was it.
When I was sixty four and a half I went to my old Chinese operation on a social visit. There I found out that the Chines CAAC would endorse licences in accordance with the native licence; ie, they would endorse my CAA licence to the age of 65, the operation was also desperately short of a pilot. A week later I was medicalised, base checked and back on line.

When I was sixty-five I thought that that was it again. An Australian pilot suggested that I get an Australian licence. We checked with CAAC and they confirmed that if the native licence did not have an age limit then they would honour that. Initially I thought it would be too difficult but after a month I decided to make the effort. I went out to Perth and it took me a month to get an ATPL(H) with an (ME) IR.

Getting it is another story by itself but get it I did.

I returned to China and my Australian license was endorsed as expected so I was back flying in China. Having an Oz licence enabled a bit of variety flying in the Solomon Islands with RAMSI which was just like being back in the Air Force.

Six months after that the rules changed. CAAC decreed that endorsements would only be valid for six months and after that foreign pilots were required to acquire a Chinese licence. I was now sixty six and they were approached about my situation with regard to age. The reply was that if I passed the medicals and the exams there was no reason why I should not be awarded a licence as there was no age limit in China.

So off I went. The medicals were long, complicated, and I saw bits of me on screens that I did not know existed. The exams were almost identical to the Australia system so that was reasonably straightforward except for the English proficiency test which was undecipherable. There was also a lot of guessing as to which of the three wrong answers was the right one. However, everything was overcome so there I was with a Chinese licence.

I must mention that even though it was a full national licence. I could not fly internationally owing to ICAO limits. The same reason why old Qantas pilots flog the Sydney to Melbourne run. Any foreign pilot flying for a Chinese airline will stop at 65 for the same reason.

One amusing aside was one of our aged first officers had reached the company retirement age and had been pensioned off; much to the relief of both foreign and Chinese captains. This was because he was 'A Son of The Long March' so he was unfireable. He came back with the argument that if the Chinese company could hire a foreigner of advancing years so why did he have to stop. They had no answer to that so they were lumbered with him for a few more years.

One had to be switched on at that job. The whole reason for being employed was that you had to teach the Chinese to fly offshore oil support to Western, North Sea, standards which meant that you had to be a damned sight better pilot than they were. A lot of the pilots you were training were brand new, brought up by the Chinese military to fly by numbers with no initiative and a blind obedience of orders. You had to learn a different mindset inasmuch that as he was steering you both to certain disaster you had to persuade him to correct it in such a way that he would think that it was his idea and therebye keeping his face.

My contract came to an end because I had done my job properly a few months short of my sixty eighth. I had a medical problem that was overcome but the 07/08 financial crisis brought everything to a stop even though I still had a Class One medical.