I was thinking you first get hired at American with a conditional offer of employment whereby you first have to put put in x amount of years of service at their regional. Although that is essentially what Delta tried to do with Endeavor but it didn't work. I think the key for that scenario is issuing an actual mainline seniority number where you have seniority comparable to new hire mainline FO's that are already coming in to American from a regional.

Although there is a fairly strong chance none of this will matter 12 months from now. 2015 is forecasting 1044 baby boomer retirements from the legacy carriers (including Fedex, UPS, and Alaska). I'm not sure there is currently 1000 pilots in the pipeline but I could be wrong.