Let me go back a step, as I realise I have not responded to your earlier comment on BAe etc, and their HR systems.
In a bank, in a trading desk, people are assessed solely on the money they make - their profit & loss ("P&L"). While I don't quite understand what you are writing - someone being promoted to save £2000 per month, causing staff exodus - people are fired in trading for insufficient earnings, or being the lowest P&L in a declining market, and many junior traders and heads of trading desks earn far more than some of their bosses simply by virtue of those with management and leadership potential being the ones promoted into senior positions.
While you may think my argument is that is "dogmatically based upon a false vision of uncorruptible meritocracy in your example companies", the reality that is borne out, is that the most able people are promoted to the top such that the company is far more successful than would otherwise be the case, and those who are brown-nosing are typically discovered when their leadership and technical incompetence is exposed.
Furthermore, although some pilots have chosen flying as a second career, the vast majority (e.g. in BA) are ex-mil, cadets, or hires from copetitors, while a large number of those who have worked elsewhere did so for a brief period while saving for ATPL course fees: I do not think there is a very large number who really "have seen promotion systems in action across many different professions". In my experience, those who choose flying do so to fly, not to escape an "old corrupt system"!
My position is indeed that seniority is bad for pilots and bad for the airlines, and that true meritocracy is the only alternative and that true meritocracies exist. My latter argument is borne out by many real world of companies led by a large cohort of younger, more educated, and more capable staff managing their elders - HBOS, BA for example.
Few other companies require people to "wait their turn" for promotion, provided they have the requisite technical and leadership skills, and while HR staff are typically a frustation to deal with, the objective requirements they enforce permit the employees in my many examples of successful companies to thrive, both personally, and to the benefit of the shareholders and other stakeholders in the firm.
Yes, the HR department is the key in this - you don't experience that in BA as the result of the sim check/route check a simple pass/fail. Great for ensuring minimum standards, but greatly lacking if objective assessment of the most capable is to be made in a meritocracy.
You aren't suggesting that BA line training captains and FOs are selected by brown-nosing, or are incompetent as they are not selected by seniority - why are you so averse to the suggestion that this could apply to the whole workforce?