I thought this was an interesting story. About 33 years ago, United Airlines offered a one-time deal of a lifetime pass on the airline (first class) to the winning bidder. For $290k, a car dealership consultant from New Jersey won the pass (not sure how he came up with the money). He has since flown 23 million miles, the most of any person ever. He says it was the best investment of his life. Not for the travel experiences, but for the frequent flyer miles (which, for some reason, United allowed him to keep). He often flew around the world without leaving the airports of his destinations, just for the miles. United keeps a Mercedes on hand (on the tarmac) in some airports in case he needs to make a quick connection. He would sell and trade frequent flyer miles with other people. He would convert the frequent flyer miles into gift cards and give those out. He even used his miles to bid on (and win) a guest spot on an episode of Seinfeld. Unless United got some huge P.R. benefit from him flying, they lost big-time on this deal. If his average international flight was 8,000 miles each way, he was paying the equivalent of $202 for first class round-trip tickets. I've never purchased first class international tickets, but business class typically goes for $6,000-12,000. And that doesn't include the frequent flyer miles. In 1990, Tom Stuker bought a lifetime pass from United Airlines for $290,000. He has since flown 23 million miles and calls the purchase the 'best investment' of his life.
Yeah I’m not getting the math of it. 23 million miles is probably worth between $230k and $460k of value. I wonder how much he was actually able to monetize. He spent many years flying almost every day multiple hours a day. Plus getting the equivalent of a chest X-ray in radiation most days.
Sure, if you discount all the Starbucks stars and Chick-fil-A points he is getting. Dude is winning man. Winnnn-innng.
My uncle sold micrometers for brown and sharp for probably 30 years. Brown and sharpe had a cycle where they would make a shitload of micrometers for about a month and then set the factory for something else and then not make micrometers again for like two years. He would spend most of his time flying to customers and taking orders that could or couldn’t be fulfilled for the next 18 months. He would study how to maximize his legs. He would change planes like ten times going from MCO to Ohare. This way he got points. Every year he and my aunt would fly first class to Ireland for a couple of weeks. I wondered how much this cost his company. To finish the story the 80s happened and a Japanese firm started making micrometers it short batches. Brown and sharpe got beat to death by much cheaper micrometers that you could order and have in a week. My uncle worked for the Japanese for about three years and pulled the same games. They then fired him once they got all his customers. lol
“…..at one point didn't sleep in a bed for 12 days…..only spending time outside of the friendly skies while he visited airport lounges.” I guess living on a jet part time beats working 40 hrs a week. oh, and $290k invested in the S&P 500 in 1990 would be worth $7M today.
Back in the late 1980s United finally was flying to all 50 states. To celebrate this they had a promotion in which anyone who flew on United to all 50 states within one month would be given a pass for life. They added up how much it would cost someone to do that, and figured nobody would or that it would be a profit for United. What they had not counted on was that buying tickets in Europe to fly domestically around the US was much cheaper than buying tickets here. Some guy from Germany figured that out and combined cheap fares with free stopovers and only spent a few thousand dollars to get his lifetime air pass.
Many years ago one of the car rental companies was offering some promotional that if you rented something like 40 cars you could get a free trip to Europe. I had an extended family member read the fine print then he went to the rental car place and said he wanted to rent 40 cars. They said they didn’t have 40 cars there. He said he didn’t care if you have them he just wanted to rent them. After some back and forth he was able to get it done and went on the trip. I don’t know the specifics but I’ll assume the terms were favorable enough to go through the effort.
Not related to this story but those of you who like this story may enjoy this docu-series on Netflix. Pepsi, Where's My Jet? (TV Mini Series 2022) - IMDb When a 20-year-old attempts to win a fighter jet in a Pepsi sweepstakes, he sets the stage for a David versus Goliath court battle for the history books.
You reminded me that back when I was at UF, I read a story of a McDonald’s contest with a boatload of prizes to be given out. Back then you needed an official entry form or a reasonable facsimile. A team of computer science majors from Caltech, I think, had the computer print out 1 million entry forms and they submitted them. They ended up being half the total entries and were drawn for about 40% to 45% of the prizes. McDonald’s thought this was totally unsportsmanlike. They awarded the prizes as they were obligated to do, but also did a re-drawing from the non-computer entries for the same prizes. Burger King donated a scholarship to the University in honor of those students.
I did not recall that story. It was apparently the inspiration behind the Lazlo Hollyfeld character in the movie Real Genius, lol.
Im not sure your math is correct. 23M miles might have that value if you redeemed them to buy flights. This guy got those miles AND 23 Million real miles of first class flying for $290k. A first class round trip mileage ticket from Atlanta to Rome on United for travel next week today >$10k, or about 175-200k miles. Seems like he got a pretty good deal.
This is interesting from when he reached 10 MM miles in 2011. US frequent flyer reaches 10 million miles
Yes it is a great deal for travel - as in visiting a destination for enjoyment. But he mostly just stayed on the plane and flew back and forth to accrue miles. So he had to monetize the miles by selling them or getting gift cards or something. 23 million miles at 2 cents a mile would be $460k. Maybe he got more out of it than that. Still, That’s a lot of time invested over many years for a modest amount of money.
Except he usually wasn't leaving the airport in Rome to see the sights (except for the 120 trips with his wife, presumably). So the only benefit he was getting for most of the trips was the miles. And I suspect he was using some of the miles for his wife's tickets on the trips she took with him. Logically, he would fly her first class, which takes a lot of miles to buy first class tickets. Of course, he could buy her coach class tickets, and switch seats with her after take-off, and still stay married.
Agreed that it was a pretty silly use of his time, not sure why he just stayed on the plane, but that was his choice. End of day he still got 23 million miles worth of first class tickets PLUS 23 million rewards miles for $290,000. Must be a bit of a strange bird
