I worked for Keystone Aerial Surveys out of PNE for 2 years. I loved the flying, just not Philadelphia.

You will find that the different companies offer different types of survey. There is pipeline patrol type flying, or aerial photography. Aerial Photography can be very boring or very challenging depending on what the company specializes in. Some jobs are four or five pictures where you are only "on line" for a mile of two. Some jobs will be huge blocks of land (picture doing an entire state) where you hand fly a straight line for 200+ miles and then turn around and do the same thing in the other direction.

As for the schedule, completely different for each company. With Keystone, I was at home every night for 9 months of the year. On May 30 I would take an airplane and a photographer and we would travel until sometime in September.

This is a good link for information about survey.
Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors (MAPPS) - Welcome
Here is the list of companies.
MAPPS: Meet Our Member Firms

If you have any questions, feel free to post them up. Since other people would probably like the info also, I will respond as much as I can on this thread instead of PM. Hope this helps.