You might be forgiven for imagining Marco Rubio waiting patiently at the gate for his boarding group to be called. Will his carry-on bag fit in the overhead compartment? Will they let him board even though his bulky one personal item looks like it’s holding quite a few pairs of high-heeled boots? We may never know, because Marco “I Always Fly Coach” Rubio is reportedly all about the private jet these days.

He wasn’t always. In fact, he initially made flying coach a major component of his campaign.

(In September, Marco Rubio’s campaign manager also bragged to reporters that, “Marco flies 95 percent commercial, always coach.”)

“Rather than relying on charter flights on private jets, Marco and the team flies commercial,” his website promises. “If it’s a flight that gets us where we need to go, when we need to get there, we take it.”

Endearing? Yes, I guess, but not so accurate anymore. These days Marco is flying 100 percent private on a Cessna Citation Excel, at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day, according to The Politico, which examined the candidate’s travel records and spoke with “people familiar with his campaign’s plans.”

“Oh yeah, we can’t get around anymore without [the jet]. We’d never make it,” Rubio recently told the Des Moines Register.

Still: Never one to let the dream die (except when he’s letting the DREAM act die), Rubio is, rather generously, still accepting $500 donations for Southwest plane tickets on his website.

Update 2:40 p.m.

A fan writes in:

A full account of the Rubio first class experience (“He got out his iPad and started working it rapidly with his thumbs, going thru what appeared to be sports & political sites, including Drudge Report.”) can be found here.

[The Politico]

Image via AP. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.