sorry to say but the remark about the over-60 flight attendants is indeed offensive, if they are doing a good job what business is it of yours how old they are...
Well in fact it is my business as I work with flight attendants all year long. Their main duty is to maintain safety for passengers, not serving coffee. I have seen flight attendants on AA (and other airlines) who are too old for the job. As Cassidain's post, they are indeed called the "dinosaurs" in the industry.
In a real emergency situation, I'd like to see these grandpas and grandmas jumping on a slide from the height of a 767 and not get hurt when reaching the ground.
I just did the recurrent training a few days ago and jumped from a slide (pilots have to do it also), it is not something I look forward to when I'll be 65 years old.
Flying 900 hours per year across multiple time zones and being constantly jet lagged (the senior FA's are usually on long haul flights) is really though on the body. Again, not very pleasant when you're over 60. Flag carriers and legacy airlines have a seniority system (boosted by unions) that encourages flight and cabin crew to fly until they retire. This is not how it works on low-cost airlines or younger generation airlines (such as VX, SouthWest or JetBlue).
In Europe, Air France, BA, Lufthansa also have senior flight attendants, whereas the young airlines promote youth and yes, good-looking and young female flight attendants. Nothing wrong with that, after all it's a business where customer satisfaction is important.
My post was not ageist at all, just realistic. It's my own opinion of course, but as someone who actually works in the airline industry, I believe I see a bigger picture.
Yea, yea, whatever....