5 Affordable Ways To Fly On A Private Jet Without Selling Your Kidney

There's no more baller form of transportation than hopping on a private jet. However, all the upsides—no security line, no crying babies, no weird Euro dude in a tank top—tend to come at an exorbitant cost.

But if you're flexible enough, and willing to do them, there are ways to fly on a private jet without resorting to questionable medical procedures involving a back alley doctor and a bathtub full of ice. And believe it or not, some of them are pretty damn fun.

When planes have a one-way chartered flight and no return flight scheduled, you can get a ridiculously cheap deal. You’ve just gotta be ready to drop everything you’re doing and run (or drive, which is probably faster) to the airport. At the time of this writing, you can grab a flight on JetSuite from Las Vegas to Los Angeles for $536 for the entire plane. It seats four, so you’re looking at $134 per person. Got any friends in Vegas?

All you have to do is play the Julia Roberts to some wealthy traveler’s Richard Gere! Kidding, kidding. Actually, a lot of the time it means providing nursing care to older travelers (but you’ve gotta have a license to practice medicine). Sometimes, though, it’s essentially being a personal assistant to a family that would rather pay you to handle the mundane stuff on a trip than do it themselves. There are actually companies that arrange such things like "flying with 2 dogs at Madame’s request.”

Think of this like a timeshare condo, only you’re buying part of a jet. You’ve got it at a really reduced rate for however many days you’ve purchased it for that year. Bonus: if you’ve got a little extra cash to spend, you can pick your plane. Hellooooo Gulfstream!

No really. There are a number of air services that’ll take you up so you can join the mile high club without worrying about angering the FAA overlords with your amorous displays. They all promise a very discreet and professional pilot who definitely isn’t filming you with his iPhone. Some even give you boxes of chocolates, champagne, and handcuffs. To get down in a jet isn’t cheap, per se, but it’s not as bad as you might think.

While standing at a private airport with a cardboard sign could work in theory, in reality it’s really possible to hitch a ride on a private jet just by getting in good with the community of hobbyist pilots. There are plenty of men and women looking for any excuse possible to take their plane up, so if you’re any good at schmoozing, you’re in with a shot. One woman even managed to hit every state but Hawaii this way.

Aaron Miller is the Rides editor for Supercompressor, and can be found on Twitter. He'd be interested in trying all of these...some more than others.