Discussed this with mnguyen@redhat.com 
 
This would work and ensure that we don't promote a release publicly with 9.4 GA content prior to RHEL 9.4 GA on April 30th

1. April 23 4.16.0-ec.6 nightly selected, RHCOS is based on public 9.4 Beta
2. April 24-25 RHCOS switches from 9.4 Beta repos to 9.4 GA repos
3. April 26 4.16.0-ec.6 promoted and 4.16 branched from master assuming green 4.17 nightlies
4. April 30 - RHEL 9.4 GA
5. May 03 fist 4.16 RC on RHEL 9.4 GA

The thing we want to be careful about is checking in selection of 4.16.0-ec.6 which should be tracked via https://issues.redhat.com/browse/FDN-623 but we could just reach out to TRT team on #forum-ocp-release-oversight to confirm. This is because we don't want to switch to 9.4 GA content until the EC build which will be made public ahead of 9.4 GA has been selected.