You have to be adventurous and visionary. These are the two conditions that Tom Stuker, a 69-year-old New Jersey resident, meets, a consultant to car dealerships and, like the beer ad, the person who perhaps knows the most about air travel and airports. In 33 years he has visited more than 100 countries and flown some 37 million kilometers (23 million miles), more than any other human being. Many more than Apollo 11, the first rocket to land on the Moon. That journey alone is equivalent (round trip) to 770,000 kilometers.
Others say it’s the worst deal United Airlines has ever done. Stuker played his cards. In 1990 he invested $290,000, equivalent today to about $660,000, to buy “a lifetime pass” offered by the airline. They certainly didn’t know at the time what that client would be capable of.
Snuggled into his favorite seat 1B, it’s one of the places he’s spent the most time since. For example, he enjoyed twelve consecutive days without sleeping in a bed, flying from Newark (in his state), to San Francisco, to Bangkok and Dubai and back again, the equivalent of four trips around the world, always in the air except in transit through airport waiting rooms. “This is the best investment I’ve ever made in my life,” he told The Washington Post, in a report written by Rick Reilly. “I have lived like a sultan,” he specified. Not only for his repeated excursions from one side of the planet to the other, but there are also bonuses for accumulating miles. He soon realized that frequent flyer miles weren’t just valuable for booking more flights. Once you get them, they can be sold, traded, or auctioned.
So he has lived in luxury with these United perks, in sumptuous hotel suites on every continent, on ostentatious cruise ships or in expensive restaurants from Paris to Perth, says the Post. Its big boom came in 2009, when it surpassed five million miles flown (eight million kilometers), according to Simple Flying. He reached ten million miles in 2019. He is the first client of the company to achieve those peaks and that opened all kinds of doors for him. Although he had already had a long career, 2019 was the year of his peak. The most intense. He made journeys equivalent to six trips to the Moon. He took 373 flights in 365 days and covered 2.4 million kilometers. Six times the journey between the earth and the moon.
He estimates that with his wife they have been on more than 120 honeymoons. He has a different treatment, forged in a long relationship. When he calls the 800 number, his voice answers, “Is that you, Mr. Stuker?” And immediately the doors open and the champagne ends up in his bag. There have been other less funny moments. In his long trot around the world, with an average of 200 to 250 days in the air per year, there has been no shortage of tragedies. He has seen four travelers die, “all of heart attacks,” he said with a certain tone of wake-up humor. “I met a couple of them, they passed away in their seats,” he added. “The last one was next to me, from Chicago to Tokyo, they covered him with a blanket and fastened his seatbelt. What else could they do for him,” he recounted.
United Airlines has long since withdrawn these types of offers. Perhaps Stuker convinced them that it was better to be forewarned. Despite all the costs involved, the company loves it and has even named two planes Thomas R. Stuker. Or they let him help design the menu for one of his clubs. On occasion, when he is too close to make a connection, a Mercedes waits for him on the track to rush him to the next gate. Stuker is already part of United history.
