Tom Stuker, United’s all-time most frequent flyer, recently crossed over the 20 million lifetime mile mark.
It is almost sobering to think how much flying 20,000,000 miles actually is. Over the years, he has clocked in:
- 803 times around the earth
- 3.5 years spent in the air
Three and a half years in the air?! United just released a special video to commemorate crossing the milestone:
As it turns out, he crossed the threshold on a flight from Newark to Los Angeles two months ago.
And the man has been busy. In 2010, just nine years ago, he was only at nine million miles:
While his overall average his 416,000 miles per year, over the last 15 or so it has been closer to 1,000,000 miles per year.
How does he do it? He helps clients sell cars around he world, often to Asia or Australia. The travel is for business. And the travel is real: United does not count flights on partners toward lifetime flight miles. Award flights also do not count.
Stuker has a United aircraft named after him and enjoys top-tier Global Services status for life (though you only need to fly 4,000,000 miles on United for that).
CONCLUSION
Stuker makes my own MillionMiler flight seem like peanuts in comparison. What an accomplishment. And while some might question whether it is all worthwhile, it would be foolish to feel sorry for him. As he states in the ABC interview above, distance makes the heart grow fond. I travel for work too, thankfully not on the scale of Stuker, and the thrill of travel is undeniable. But so is coming home to those you love.
@ Matthew — This is not for business, but insanity. Think about it. It takes about 40 hours per week to fly 1 million miles per year. I cannot imagine a business that would neessitate this traveling. I feel sad for this man.
@Matthew, any idea how many miles a wide-body pilot for United flies in a year?
My understanding is 400-500K.
I can confirm this. My brother in law was a WB pilot for United (now he’s on the A319/320…my sister is also a A319/320 pilot). He would Fly from ORD, and would have one trip a week over to Europe. Figure 4000 miles one way, so 8K round trip, 4x a month, 12 months a year, comes out to 384K miles.
It makes me wonder how many collateral miles he may have on other carriers. If he travels that much to different clients I would assume he has a ton of miles on other carriers and partner airlines I would assume this is the most airline miles for anyone on any carrier. Likely more than many flight crew members.
Certainly respect his business pursuit and his ability to travel, but he looks rather unhealthy and I hope he is taking care of himself.
Agree. Eating lounge and airline food catches up without proper rest and exercise.
It seems like pure vanity at this point TBH
I forgot to add that I met him onboard United’s final 747 flight. He’s quite a character.
https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2017/11/13/united-airlines-747-farewell-flight-review/
20 million miles and they served him some Moët? Then I realised it was for the entire plane – nice gesture by UA. That lifestyle would be horrific, although his immune system would be well tuned by now.
Has anyone do the flight/time maybe in this? Is this even possible? To me, it appears you’d need to fly SFO-SYD-SFO every there days, for 11 years.
He made cleared 100k PQM this year on 1/7. Three trips to Australia in January alone.
See this FT post:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/30601163-post1546.html
Call me a skeptic but I don’t buy the whole “this is for business” line.
Even professional travel bloggers don’t travel this much.
It’s NOT FOR BUSINESS….
Bravo for buying the lifetime pass 30 some years ago. It is a fact that he bought the pass and flies for free now. He only books one way tickets because it earns double the mileage from UA.
He rarely flies for business (5% max of his overall travels). The rest are mileage runs, staying at his destination for an hour or two MAX before getting right back on the plane (sometimes the same plane) and departs. His pass is his primary source of income(tax free income).
-United pays on average of $7,000-$10,000 each way.
-United also pays the taxes.
-4 RT per week = 8 one way tickets ($60-$80K)
-Double it because his companion seat is almost always occupied (the seat generates $/gift cards for him)
-16 one way tickets per week
-Costing $150,000-$200,000 to UA.
-Then he and companion will earn a whopping 16 x 75,000 miles for 1.2 million spendable miles to their MP account from UA for one week of flying.
-When the miles are redeemed, that costs UA AGAIN. 1.2 million miles can be redeemed for $8,000 in gift cards.
-$8,000 in gift cards converts to $7200 cash.
If you do the math, just using the numbers above comes to $11 million dollars a year.
There’s many more expenses UA incurs that you can add to that.
Any stories about how much he helps United are bogus. Good for him though. Just call it for what it is.
Truly astounding. Makes even my busiest years as a 1K look like recess. I do understand the sense of happiness frequent flying brings many and getting stir crazy when you’re on the ground too long. But life isn’t a dress rehearsal.
I agree that at this point there is some vanity involved with this. With the hours involved i find it very hard that there is not a more efficient way to run his business without this much travel…
And he only works in UA cities?
You say the travel is real?? What he’s doing is killing United. He often laughs that United is waiting for him to die.
Bravo for buying the lifetime pass 30 some years ago. It is a fact that he bought the pass and flies for free now. He only books one way tickets because it earns double the mileage from UA.
He rarely flies for business (5% MAX of his overall travels). The rest are mileage runs, staying at his destination for an hour or two MAX before getting right back on the plane (sometimes the same plane) and departs. His pass is his primary source of income(tax free income).
-United pays on average of $7,000-$10,000 each way.
-United also pays the taxes.
-4 RT per week = 8 one way tickets ($60-$80K)
-Double it because his companion seat is almost always occupied (the seat generates $/gift cards for him)
-16 one way tickets per week
-Costing $150,000-$200,000 to UA.
-Then he and companion will earn a whopping 16 x 75,000 miles for 1.2 million spendable miles to their MP account from UA for one week of flying.
-When the miles are redeemed, that costs UA AGAIN. 1.2 million miles can be redeemed for $8,000 in gift cards.
-$8,000 in gift cards converts to $7200 cash.
If you do the math, just using the numbers above comes to $11 million dollars a year.
There’s many more expenses UA incurs that you can add to that.
Any stories about how much he helps United are bogus. Good for him though. Just call it for what it is.