Originally Posted by
sincx
Why are there mandatory retirement ages for pilots but not flight attendants, despite flight attendants being there "primarily for your safety"? ... Not to mention that cases of fraud like this seem to be primarily committed by the more senior employees.
I think you have a fault in your logic. There's no relation between the age of senior flight attendants and this kind of fraud. The opportunity for fraud is created by the union seniority bidding system, not age. Do a thought experiment: consider the effect of a hypothetical mandatory FA retirement age. Pick several different possible cutoff ages among the population of 50,000 United flight attendants. No matter what age you pick, there would still need to be 50,000 flight attendants (older retired ones would be replaced with younger ones). But you still have the same situation: 50,000 flight attendants and a route bidding system based strictly on seniority. You have the same opportunity for this kind of fraud, whereby the more senior FAs have an opportunity to sell their bids to FAs of lower seniority.