The Story Of The World’s Most Frequent Flyer

While we all like to fly and might think we are well-traveled, what most of us have achieved in air miles is nothing compared to New Jersey car dealership consultant Tom Stuker. As of 2024, the world’s most famous frequent flyer has clocked up over 24 million miles on over 12,000 flights with his beloved United Airlines.

Since the early 1980s, Tom’s business career has taken him to spots all over the world – including more than 300 trips to Australia. At one point, Tom had his own television show called Car Lot Rescue on Spike TV and even made a cameo appearance on Larry David’s Seinfeld. Tom was also the inspiration behind the movie Up In The Air, a film about a corporate downsizing expert starring George Clooney.

Tom always flies with United Airlines

Based in Chicago, it will be no surprise to hear that almost all of Tom Stuker’s flights have been with United Airlines and its Star Alliance partners. On July 11, 2011, Tom Stuker took United Airlines Flight 942 from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport (ORD) to become the first United Airlines passenger to have ever clocked up ten million miles.

It had taken Stuker 19 years to accumulate the first five million miles and another ten years to double the figure. To celebrate its most loyal customer, United Airlines had a party for Stuker both in the air and on the ground in Chicago.

Since then, Stuker broke the 20-million-mark back in 2018 and has now racked up over 24 million miles and counting. He has actually flown plenty more than this, as award and partner flights don’t count toward miles. Some of his feats are the stuff of legend – he once traveled for 12 days straight without sleeping in a bed, jetting from Newark to San Francisco to Bangkok to Dubai multiple times.

How does he pay for all those flights?

While Stuker’s appetite for airline miles has been well-known for decades, it wasn’t entirely clear how much he was funding it all. A Washington Post report solves this mystery – as some may have suspected, Stuker purchased a lifetime flight pass with United back in 1990, something that carriers used to offer many years ago but have since discontinued.

Shelling out $290,000 for an unlimited flight pass (worth around $675,000 adjusted for inflation), Stuker considers it the best investment he has ever made. In 2019 alone, Stuker flew 373 times with United, traveling a staggering 1.46 million miles that year.

He redeems his accumulated points on a wide range of luxuries, such as hotel suites, cruises, and Walmart gift cards. On a single day, he cashed $50,000 in gift cards to contribute towards his brother’s house renovation. Once, he even bid 451,000 miles at a charity auction to appear in an episode of Seinfeld.

Tom’s tips for frequent fliers

Tom’s early life saw him grow up in a working-class family in New Jersey. One of seven children, Tom never flew as a child, and as an adult, gradually progressed from economy up to business and first class. Tom admits that if he could only fly in economy, he would never have managed to fly so many miles.

Photo: United Airlines

Before COVID-19, Stuker recorded he spent between 200 and 250 days a year in the air and has some advice for would-be frequent flyers, including the following tips.

• Have a monogamous relationship with just one airline. (Stuker has been a United Airlines MileagePlus loyalty program member since 1983).
• Keep the airline’s seat map app open while you board. If a blocked seat you wanted opens up, just take it, as the airline couldn’t sell it and won’t care.
• When flying long-haul, don’t adjust your watch to local time; instead, take a three-hour nap.
• Never bring a checked bag. Every town has laundromats.
• Fly in the best cabin you can, and if possible, get someone else to pay for it.

Tom’s favorite seat has always been seat 1B (a front-row aisle seat), and he is treated like royalty by United, despite being the airline’s biggest loss-making passenger by a considerable distance.

Stuker sees flying as a great adventure and a chance to escape from the mundane things of everyday life. Transcendent to meditative bliss, Stuker believes that you can get a good seat on a long-haul flight to escape as you fly from one part of the planet to another.

Photo: United Airlines

In these days of flight shaming and a desire to help save the planet, Stuker does not care much about what people may think of him jetting all over the world, telling GQ magazine in 2020 the following:

“I’m not adding to the footprint. The plane is going to fly whether I’m on it or not. It would be much more relevant if I was flying in a private jet. Those are the people who can help the environment much more than I can if they flew commercial.”

Other frequent flyers

Stuker is miles ahead (by several million) when it comes to the frequent flyer league table. One traveler who could challenge Stuker’s crown is Delta Air Lines flyer Todd O., who in 2023, hit 14 million miles with the airline over a three-decade period.

Little is known about Todd, such as his age, so it isn’t clear if Stuker’s record is feasibly within reach. He did manage to jump from 13 million to 14 million in the space of 18 months, so at that rate, he’d need another 15 years to catch up to Stuker. Other well-known frequent flyers include Fred Finn, who has flown over 15 million miles in his lifetime, including a record 718 flights on the Concorde.

Will Stuker’s record ever be beaten? With airlines no longer doing lifetime passes like the one Stuker acquired in 1990, it’s difficult to see anyone reaching him, particularly if he keeps his streak going for the next decade or two.