From SpaceX to Delta: Unforgettable Journeys and Record Breakers

           Last week, four tourists returned home following the trip of a lifetime. No, it wasn’t the 9-month-long round-the-world cruise we wrote about last week. This trip went up, and up, and up, farther up than any humans had been in 52 years. The Polaris Dawn mission by the company SpaceX sent two men and two women 870 miles from Earth. The last time anybody went that far was the final Apollo mission to the moon in 1972.

            Leading the mission was Jared Isaacman, a 41-year-old high school dropout who founded a company at age 16 that a quarter-century later resulted in him having a net worth of nearly $2 billion. He’d already flown around the world as a pilot, setting a record for circumnavigating the globe in a light jet at age 21. This was his first spaceflight, and he became the first civilian to walk in space when he exited the capsule nearly 500 miles above the planet. He was joined by SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, who is also a classical violinist. She brought her instrument along and joined up with orchestras on earth, linked up by the Starlink communications system, to perform “Rey’s Theme” from “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” This wasn’t the first musical performance in space; that came in December 1965, when Gemini 6 astronauts Thomas Stafford and Wally Schirra played “Jingle Bells” on a harmonica and a handful of small bells. Those instruments are now in the Smithsonian.

            The Polaris Dawn mission got my husband thinking about how many miles we’ve traveled. My Delta app keeps track of them, and prior to our current trip to Africa, I’d flown 693,282 miles. I’ve logged more than a few on other airlines, too, but just the Delta miles would take me to the moon and back with mileage to spare. I’ve got a ways to go for the world record of miles traveled in flight, though. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, who’s currently aboard the International Space Station, will have logged 1,111 days in space when he returns to Earth any day now. Perhaps he’ll be down by the time you read this. When he finally lands after his current 374-day mission, he will have orbited the earth 17,776 times, for a total of about 440 million miles, give or take a few. Does he get any kind of frequent-flyer status with that?
     
       Okay, space travelers are going to rack up the miles, just by definition. What about mileage records for “atmospheric” (translation: traditional) flights? Back in 2003, Fred Finn, an Englishman, set the record by reaching 13.9 million miles in the air. He commuted regularly between London and New York, and still holds the record for transatlantic supersonic flights with 714 crossings on the Concorde. Finn’s record for supersonic travel is likely to stand awhile, as there has been no commercial travel at Mach 1 or better since the Concorde’s last flight in 2003. But his overall mileage record was smashed a few years ago by an American.

            Tom Stuker, a car dealership consultant from New Jersey, bought a lifetime pass from United Airlines in 1990 for $290,000 (about $675,000 today). He has logged over 24 million miles on more than 12,000 flights, all with United and its Star Alliance partners. Stuker has actually accrued many more miles, but those he racked up on award and partner flights don’t count. He’s been to Australia more than 300 times. He once traveled for 12 days straight without sleeping in a bed, jetting from Newark to San Francisco to Bangkok to Dubai multiple times. His traveling inspired the movie “Up in the Air,” about a corporate downsizing expert played by George Clooney. In 2019 alone, Stuker flew 373 times with United, traveling a staggering 1.46 million miles.

            As you might expect, Stuker racks up a lot of frequent-flyer points. He’s spent them on cruises, hotel suites, Walmart gift cards and more. On a single day, he cashed in $50,000 in gift cards to contribute to his brother’s house renovation. Once, he even bid 451,000 miles at a charity auction to appear in an episode of ���Seinfeld.”

            Stuker admits that he would never have come close to all those miles if he’d just traveled economy class, and he never brings a checked bag. “Every town has laundromats,” he said.

            He’s still flying and adding to his record. Can anybody possibly catch him? Since airlines long ago stopped selling lifetime passes, that’s unlikely, but there is one frequent flyer who could come close. A Delta customer who goes by the name of Todd O. hit 14 million miles with the airline last year. Nobody knows much about Todd, such as his age, so it’s impossible to predict if he can reach Stuker-level mileage. At his present pace, Todd would need another 15 years or so to catch up.

            Ready to add to your own frequent-flyer account? Give us a call!