You're right about 787 people trying to get back to LAX but unless there IS an SFO bump, it's gonna be a LONG time to wait.

LAX 787 captain is properly staffed right now with 62 lineholders and 14 reserves for May. In fact, in might be a bit overstaffed because reserves are averaging about 15 hours of hard time per month and that's been true since March when they took over LAX-LHR. If you look at the SSC report, LAX 787 captains fly the lowest amount of hard time per reserve of any category on the whole airline (excepting IAH 787 which is in the process of closing).

I have "unofficial" word that LAX 777 is closing for sure after they go through the NPDM process. That's 26 LAX 777 captains ALL of whom (IMO) will go to LAX 787. That will increase the number of captains by 33%! LA might take over DEN-NRT when IAH closes, but that would only require about 15 additional captains (including reserve requirements).

Then you have 99 747 captains that need to find a new home. Many of those captains used to be LAX 747 captains and only went to SFO because they closed LAX. Most of those LA-refugees will bump to LAX 787. Based on the people I know personally, I'd say at least 10 and probably more like 15.

Then you have 77 IAH 787 captains being bumped. I'd guess that the majority of them will go to either IAH 777 or DCA 787, but a few will probably go west to SFO or LAX.

I firmly believe that when this all shakes out, there's going to be pretty substantial over staffing on LAX 787, at least in the left seat (not sure about the right seat). I predict that if LAX takes the DEN-NRT trip, they'd need to have 85 captains to be properly staffed. I'm pretty sure they're going to end up with over 120.

So unless they have some new routes planned for LAX (doubtful), they'll either need to bump about 30 people out of LAX or have LAX trips that deadhead to SFO to cover some of their flying.

It'll be interesting to watch all this play out.