I'm happy to hear about younger guys getting hired. I'd initially thought the younger, the better considering if it were me, I'd want to move a known retirement date further away. If you hire a 45-50 year old, you're adding to the already known number of retirements coming due in 15-20 years.

However, in completely anecdotal terms, the majority, if not all of the folks I know to get hired at a major in the last year have been 40ish-mid 50s. That had me thinking companies might have been concerned about having to pay a person top-level captain pay for the last tens years past when an older hire would have already retired. I guess I just need to meet more people!