If Tom Stuker wants to fly somewhere, he doesn’t have to worry about the ticket. He did that more than 30 years ago: in 1990, the American bought a flight flat rate that was valid for his entire life.
At that time, the airline United Airlines offered such a ticket for 290,000 US dollars: pay once, fly as often as you want. Stuker struck – and has been flying all over the world ever since. In total, he has traveled 37 million kilometers by plane and visited more than a hundred countries. “The ticket was the best investment of my life,” he recently told the Washington Post.
According to the 69-year-old, he has completed more than 12,000 flights over the past 33 years, mostly in his favorite seat: seat 1B. Of course, that’s how he accumulated a lot of flight miles – and he uses them in turn to organize his trips. With the bonus miles program, he can get cruises and expensive hotel rooms at low cost or even completely free of charge. He was also able to use it to pay for the renovation of his brother’s house, among other things.
So Tom Stuker makes clever use of the system – but it all started with a brave step. But the sum of 290,000 dollars was totally worth it for him. If he had had to pay for all of his flights individually, he told the Washington Post, the cost would have been nearly $2.5 million. Before the corona pandemic, he spent a total of 200 to 250 days a year in the air. The airline has even named two of its jets after him. On his Instagram account, Stuker takes his followers into his jet set life: most recently he posted pictures from Cape Town and Dubai.
Of course, with so many air trips, there’s hardly anything that the passionate passenger from New Jersey hasn’t experienced. This includes four fatalities on flights Stuker was on. “All heart attacks,” as he says. However, the 69-year-old is not worried about the impact of his flights on the environment. He would not increase CO2 emissions, he said in 2020 “GQ”: “The plane flies whether I’m sitting in it or not. It would be much more relevant if I were to fly in a private jet. These are the people who care for the environment could help much more than I, who fly the line.”
Sources: Washington Post / GQ / Tom Stuker on Instagram
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