9G,

You are new to this forum as of May. Out of curiosity, which major do you work for?

How would a merit based system be more fair?
How would you prevent cronyism?
I could see a problem with certain demographics(fighter, transports, academy, civilian, etc) gaining ground in flight ops management and skewing hiring, upgrades etc based on their background. Hell, at my company the flight ops mgmt. crowd already appears to do that.