Yup. I'd recommend staying away too.
Some background on the company. It used to be a management company where they looked for aircraft owners who wanted them to manage and charter out the airplane. Then they decided to partner with Jet Smarter and saw a large increase in flight hours and revenue. Despite the fact that everybody knew that Jet Smarter was not a sustainable model, Jet Edge decided to go all in and bought some G4's that were dedicated to Jet Smarter.
Fast forward, Jet Smarter implodes and Jet Edge was in a panic with the lost revenue and the new planes they bought for JS. Then they decided to start what they called the floating fleet. Basically the company split into two parts. The managed fleet and the floating fleet (aka the controlled fleet). Managed fleet was the original model where the owner, owner rep, or the lead captain would select and approve trips. Floating fleet was where JE would take control of the plane, manning, etc and give the owner a certain amount per flight hour. Owner still paid for crews, mx, fees, etc. Needless to say the floating fleet was the most profitable for JE and the vast majority of the charter trips went to it. From my understanding they're constantly pressuring managed fleet owners to go into floating fleet.
During the pandemic the floating fleet pilots were immediately furloughed. For the managed fleet side, as the story goes, instead of letting the owners come to them, JE went to the owners and told them that this was a great time to furlough their pilots, renegotiate their contracts, and bring them back at a much lower salary. This was confirmed by several lead captains who had close relationships with their owners. Fortunately some owners said no, while others didn't know any better and went with management's recommendation.
When flying started coming back they brought back the pilots but at reduced salaries. Used to be 150k for CA and about 110K for FO's, but brought them back at 125K and about 85k respectively. I believe they tried to entice people with even lower salaries but crews got ****ed. Then as flying picked up more they only brought CA pay to 144k and about 90k for FO's even though the company was flying more hours than before COVID. They did eventually bring pay back to 150K for CA's and nothing for FO's. Although, the way they worded it was "pay increase" instead of return to pay. In exchange for this "pay increase" they also opted to take away accrued vacation and assigned crews to specific tails so that they can better maintain the airplanes and keep the interiors pretty.
So in short, they took away accrued vacation and gave crews more responsibility to get their pay to what it was pre-covid. Correction, CA pay to pre-covid. FO's are still at their low pay with the promise of an upgrade. Jet Edge also has their own maintenance department so of course all maintenance is pushed toward it. As another poster mentioned, there was an email that went out to the JE pilots which has also widely been circulated amongst pilots in other charter companies. It basically threatened management of forming a union and accused the company of embezzlement among other things. The company sent out an email promising changes to make things better but who knows.
Positives:
-15 on 13 off rotation schedule
-You can be home based
-Provides benefits health, dental, vision, 401k, etc
-Still has a good group of support staff
-Stay predominately in Marriott
-Crews get rental cars when available
-You get to keep points from hotel stays and rental cars
-KCM
-ASAP program
Negatives:
-Airplanes get flown hard. Their target is roughly 700-900 hours a year
-Constant maintenance issues from being flown hard
-Expect to get flown hard. Roughly 60-80 hours per rotation with back to back, multi-leg days
-Expect to fly everyday on your rotation unless the airplane breaks or you call in fatigue
-You'll need to itemize and record all your expenses like hotel, rental car, airline, fuel uplift, lav service, parking fees, etc on FOS within 24-48 hours including your flight times
-No crew meals because "that's what per diem is for"
-When raising concerns about high turn over, response is "well, we've got a stack of resumes"
-No real IOE training or mentoring. Currently pretty bad morale
In summary, not the worst company out there but definitely not the best. Probably best for people who don't live in high cost states like CA or NY and who want to build hours. It's a wait and see if management really is trying to improve things but without major management changes its highly doubtful. Hope this helps to get a full view and your decision to work at JE.