He's not talking about indoc; he's talking about aircraft training. If you're not physically attending an indoc class, then your seniority isn't based on that indoc class. However, once class starts, you have a choice of which aircraft training slot you want. At LAA, your choice mattered, because OCC date was based on the anticipated completion of training; if you chose a later class, you had a later OCC date. LUS pilots didn't have to factor that into their decision, since US used the industry standard of starting seniority when you report to class.

As for furloughs exercising their right to defer, the fact is that that's not going to hurt them under any of the committee's proposals, because none of the proposals reorder the pre-merger lists. The ones who could be affected by that decision, depending on the arbitrators' award, are the people hired to fill the slots that they chose not to return to. Rather than giving two people credit for each of those jobs (the furloughee who deferred and the new hire/flow through who took their place), the East and West proposals only give credit to one person for each job. The effect of this is not to move the furloughed pilots down, but to move their replacements down.

Similarly, not giving the flows LOS credit for the time that they didn't, you know, work for American, doesn't harm them; their place on the LAA list is already set and won't be reordered. Rather, it would have the effect of moving new hires, who only had a job BECAUSE the flows were held, down the list; again, only giving one person credit for each job available.

But then, I think you already know all of this.