Timing was important, yes. Deal with it. But you're wrong about this being luck. Legendaries put in a lot of time here posting and many have still earned lots of merits on top of what they were airdropped. Again, you're going to have to deal with it. Nobody cares about claims of "this isn't fair, wahhhh".
The word airdrop is too much expensive word in this scenario as it's purely a luck so let's call, merits are "donated" to higher ranked members as they didn't had one.