You should have stayed at your previous airline and enjoyed your 25 years of seniority there. Why would you think that time in other airline would transfer to another airline as seniority? That is just ridiculous.

An 5 year FO has offered way more to a company that a 1 year CPT has. You talk about more senior people in the company (ex-cadets) in the company having priority over leave, bases etc, and you think it is unfair yet you find it fair that you should leapfrog people who have been waiting for years a transfer just because you brought 25 years of experience, which none are in your current airline.

And for what it is worth, every DEC in RYR has leapfrogged the base system when they join, as you get the base you want. So you even haven't joined the company and yet you already have skipped a list of people. But you probably never realised that, even though you had 25 years of experience.

So what? You can choose your base as DEC when you join.
If you then want another base you go back in the queue. Sounds more than fair to me.

It's not called arrogance, it's called seniority. You seem to have it confused with experience. You can carry experience with you to another employer but you don't carry seniority. Many have left RYR after some good years on the LHS to start at the bottom on other airlines. Plus, in the specific case of RYR there are people there that delay the command to work on different departments like training, performance etc.