I spent a year there, six years ago. I hear that working conditions have improved since then.
First, what do you need from the job? It requires hard work and sacrifice. Tough job for a family man. Looking back, it was what I needed at the time. I got locked out of a good airline job; there was no going back to what had been. I had many thousands of hours of classic Lear time, so I hired on as a Captain. It was a little better that way, because they had too many co-pilots, which means they wouldn't fly as much.
You had to fly to make money. Sort of... You had a low weekly garantee, and mileage pay. You had to work off your garantee before you'd actually make money: thousands of miles in an antique Lear 25, last minute, middle of the night, in and out of Mexico, or who knows where, before you started making extra. If you got out on air ambulance contract (or DoD contract for Falcon 20 pilots), you'd get a bunch of garanteed miles every day, plus 10 hours of paid rest time every day at our wait time rate- I believe $15/hour. So you'd make more money sleeping than you would flying, unless you flew a lot. I flew 17,000 miles one 15-day air ambulance tour, which was a lot of money, maybe enough to make up for a tour spent in base making $400/week?
Schedule then was 15 on 6 off. If you parked an airplane on the west coast at the end of your 15 day tour, they wouldn't let you leave until your replacement was on-site, so that would turn into 16 on, 5 off. That happened to me a lot. There was no vacation. If I was in base, I'd put my suitcase in my car just to go to the grocery store; had 15 minute response time to airport for freight and organ harvest trips. If I was in base, I was never once released early, but that was because they were short captains.
All that being said, I enjoyed my time there, especially with it in my rear view mirror. It was exactly what I needed. I had been flying new, automated airplanes to the same couple dozen airports at my airline job. This job got me back to my roots: raw-data, analog flying in old classic Lears. I've flown a lot of jets in my career, but nothing flies like a classic Lear; it's a real treat. I got outside my airline comfort zone, flying all over the hemisphere. It made me a more complete pilot. Being Lear current again opened other doors, and eventually lead to a really good corporate job. Thank you Doug!
For a young single guy wanting jet time, it's a good gig if you don't mind working hard. Great gig for really learning how to fly. After doing some hard time, you'll be able to fly circles around someone who grew up in an automated RJ with full-time autothrottles, VNAV and a giant PFD. Those are still valuable skills in an automated industry, and there are damned few places left to practice them.
Have heard that conditions are a little better now?