What's all this about promotion being based on merits?
Never really saw that it the legal profession or with friends and family in the City. Plenty of the best professionals are passed over or abused by their more unscrupulous colleagues to get to the top of the ladder.
In most industries, unless you go self-employed, your career path is determined by the whims of your superiors. If kissing bums and talking the big talk is what you regard as a meritocracy, then I'm not really interested.
In a stable airline where people's length of service with the company is broadly reflected by the number of completed pages in their logbook, is not seniority ladder sensible?
As was stated above, seniority does not ensure promotion, merely the order in which those who merit promotion actually achieve it. Ergo, you may find that there are people in the LHS at some airlines who got there through meritocracy who might not achieve the same exhalted postion in an airline that promotes on the basis of seniority...
As for rostering and holidays, I think I'm right in saying that there are mechanisms to ensure that being at the bottom of the seniority ladder does not consign you to working every Christmas etc.
That said, it ought to be possible to move between airlines and be slotted in to a suitably senior position. That certainly does happen in other professions. Reform rather than revolution?