When Robin Parsley wants to get away from the pressure of running Endeavour Holdings, his Houston-area real estate firm, he goes and burns off some pounds—a few hundred pounds of jet fuel, that is.

“It’s Top Gun kind of fun,” the 46-year-old Parsley says of flying his British Strikemaster light attack jet, which looks like a private plane on growth hormones. Although Strikemasters have most often been used for training, they can fly at up to 418 miles per hour. “The airplane doesn’t like to fly straight and level. It’s an adrenaline junkie’s airplane.”

Planes like the Strikemaster are mean, fast, and cool. That’s why they’ve drawn the attention of executive-level pilot-adventurers: Bob Lutz of General Motors and Ross Perot Jr. of Perot Systems have reportedly owned such vintage jets.

The price of a jet doesn’t have to be sky-high, though. When Parsley bought his 1972 Strikemaster a few years ago, he paid just over $125,000. (He believes a comparable plane built today would be worth around $1.5 million.) You can pick up a retired Russian MIG-15 from a former Warsaw Pact nation for a little more than the cost of two new Audi TTs—about $70,000. But there are plenty of other costs, hassles, and hazards to factor in. Buying and maintaining a good, preflown fighter jet isn’t quite like owning those Audis.

The U.S. Air Force has the best jets in the world, but when they’re retired, Air Force mechanics “de-mil” the aircraft, removing all weapons systems and sometimes cutting vital wing structures to render them unflyable. Formerly Communist countries, on the other hand, dump their planes in fields to rust. Just travel to a place like Poland or Latvia, pick out a jet you like, figure out who owns it, buy it, remove all the guns and ammo from it, have it disassembled, load it into a shipping container, send it home, unload it, reassemble it, restore it to flying condition, and have it inspected by the State Department; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; and the Federal Aviation Administration. And voilà, you’re cleared for takeoff.

To run this gantlet, you’ll need to be comfortable negotiating with unusual types of people. “The aircraft, in general, are usually already bought by arms trade organizations, so you end up dealing with them,” says David Sutton, president of New Jersey’s Red Star Aviation, a consulting firm that helps civilians buy military aircraft. “It’s basically cash-and-carry.”

Or cash-and-nothing-to-show-for-it, says Mark Clark, president of Courtesy Aircraft, a dealer in Rockford, Illinois. “You have to be careful that the person selling the airplane actually owns it.”
 
You can avoid ownership problems by buying from dealers like Clark, as those intrepid few who originally imported the Soviet jets begin to sell them. George Lazik, 65, who founded a computer company in California, learned firsthand how expensive the two MIG-15s he bought from Poland in the early 1990s were to operate—fighters suck about $1,500 worth of fuel an hour, and can fly for only about two hours before the tanks run dry. Now he flies a Russian Yak-52 piston-engine trainer instead. (“It’s not a crowd-pleaser like a MIG,” he says, “but you can still go and do as many things as you can in a jet.”)

A certified pilot can fly a military jet, but only according to strict F.A.A. guidelines. Fighters were built to wage war, and flying them safely requires the reflexes and training of a military pilot. “These airplanes bite,” Red Star’s Sutton says.

Case in point: In 2001, Michael Chowdry, founder and C.E.O. of Atlas Air, an air freight company headquartered in Purchase, New York, crashed his Czech L-39 fighter-trainer on takeoff with Wall Street Journal editor Jeff Cole on board, killing both men. The accident was linked to problems with the plane’s canopy.

To train civilians in the ways of the military pilot, schools such as the Jet Warbird Training Center in Sante Fe, New Mexico, and Flying Amigos, a Houston training center for MIG pilots, have emerged. Current F.A.A. regulations require a civilian fighter-jet pilot to have logged 1,000 hours of total flight time, to obtain an instrument rating, and to pass a test ride in the fighter jet. To keep flying with passengers, the pilot needs to log three takeoffs and landings every 90 days, the same requirements that would apply to a Cessna pilot.

On top of everything else, there’s the maintenance. “A jet fighter requires constant tinkering,” says Oscar Vickery, owner of Flying Amigos. “Imagine if you had a Formula One racecar. They don’t stay peaked up all the time. They’re not temperamental, but they require that you maintain them.”

If they’re so hard to come by and so dangerous to fly, why would anyone want a fighter? Not many do—or at least not many indulge. The Experimental Aircraft Association estimates that there are fewer than 30 privately owned jet fighters in the U.S., though trainers like Parsley’s number in the hundreds.

Some say flying a military jet has improved their business skills. “It’s something that you can take out and push your own limits a little bit and get out there on the edge,” Parsley says. “In business we’re all on the edge.” But Lazik disagrees, calling his MIGs “a big distraction.”

But above all, fighters are fun. “Who doesn’t want to fly a fighter?” Parsley says. “It’s a Ferrari of the sky. No—10 times a Ferrari.”