The end (or maybe just pause) of the gold rush has thrown a lot of shortcomings into view. 16 days on the road with thin flying gives one a lot of time to think. The contract, improved though it is, is well behind a lot of our contemporaries in every meaningful metric except hourly rates. K4 offers pilots more than most ACMI outfits seem willing to, but competition for recruitment and retention is not limited to a handful of stagnant or failing carriers. Being king of the trash heap is not going to cut it when all of the players are trying to hire from the same pool of pilots.
The top quintile of the seniority list and those well on their way to 65 are likely wise to stay put, but many others got here in the back half of a huge wave, and will have decades to live with the choices they make today. Our most recently published seniority list shows that approximately 75% of the K4 pilot group was hired in the last five years. There is no impending retirement cliff. Absent a resumption of significant growth, people already here can expect career progression here to be quite slow indeed, let alone future new hires.
If someone pings the hiring algorithm at a long-time goal job that's ramping up their hiring just as K4 is facing headwinds and managing expectations, it falls to the guys in Yip to provide solid reasons for them to stay. And to be clear, they do. Some love the flying, some enjoy Chunks O' Days on/off lifestyle, some live in places that will make them lifelong multi-leg commuters. And some, like me, have found out first-hand how the company earned their reputation of going above and beyond for family matters. But there are potential differences of millions of dollars or years of time at home over the course of a two or three decade career at K4 versus one at a legacy with a palatable pilot base.
Another leap forward in contract gains could shrink some of those expectation gaps, but I wouldn't blame anyone whose optimism has been dampened by the company's recent words and actions. I believe what's being said about the current economic climate and needs of the business, and I think the company's response is reasonable, but we pilots would be foolish not to evaluate our options while it remains a seller's market. I hope K4 can weather the storm with enough left over in the coffers for us, because it has been a great fit for me, and I'd hate to leave a job I like so much.