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> ... and are not equipped to be flying in dense airspace, especially thousands of feet in the air.

Isn't this just saying that you have no way to avoid being hit by an airplane, no transponder, maybe no radio, no flightpath, and are breaking about a million laws by doing so?

(I mean, doesn't address the "short range" problem, but "idiocy" seems sufficient to overcome all the rest.)

Maybe a jet pack with a large fuel tank in the shape of a human would be able to pull it off.

that seems to be a jet turbine pack which can be 15-20 minutes of flying at 60mph+ - enough to get several miles into the ocean.

With no lifting surfaces?

very napkin as we don't know how good their engines are. For small and thus low efficient jet engines - with exhaust velocity of anywhere between 500-1000m/s and with the 1:50 fuel/air ratio one has to burn 40-80g/s to get 200kg thrust. Thus a 1000s of flight takes 40-80kg of fuel.