He should take the job. Get a seniority number while he can. If he's young enough, he's going to have a great career. Furloughs happen, but UAL/CAL has between 300-700 retirements per year for the next 20 years.
That's a lot of pilots that have to be hired.
Getting to LAX or SFO in 2 years is going happen. When UAL was growing, new hires were going to LAX and SFO. As a matter of fact, the bottom 2 pilots on the list are in LAX and SFO.