"We've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas!"

Hiring someone older would be setting them up for a very bad time later in life.

Unless you overhaul the way government workers earn retirement, or we decide that it's safe to employ older air traffic controllers, any other choice would be highly exploitative.

Any federal law enforcement position has this. For example, for the FBI or the secret service, you must enter by 37 and retire by 56.

If they spend 20 years there, and get 20 years worth of pension, what's the problem? They can combine it with whatever savings and pensions they had before being hired at 36.

Unless you're saying they don't get any pension, in which case stop screwing people over that way and cut the pension qualification to 5 years or less.

So ,that was another problem they were causing themselves in manning.

Edited to add documentation: https://kaisoapbox.github.io/projects/faa_biographical_asses...

https://libraries.uta.edu/news-events/blog/1981-patco-strike

Their ability to collectively bargain effectively. It doesn’t matter how good their current compensation is - they aren’t getting the fair market rate without the ability to bargain as a union. Its an example of government and corporate interests colluding to suppress labor wages.

https://www.faa.gov/jobs/working_here/benefits

Median pay is $127,805 and by law the salary is capped at $221,900. Training salary starts at under $67,000 in the Bay Area and is much lower elsewhere. They can't strike and are actively being outsourced. Look up the KSQL controller on youtube to see how well that's going.