One day you got that sweet, sweet tarmac transfer, next decade you don't.

Well, perhaps UA should have put more effort into ensuring it didn't cost them dearly. Are you suggesting that the people who bought those lifetime passes did something illegal or unethical? And it does sound like whining on the part of UA.

Well then I'm kinda hosed! :-) No wonder I never get upgrades anymore!

Much as it's sensible to have a different entity here, my personal values don't allow me to be anything but transparent. It's dumb, I know, Especially here on FT, where there's nothing to be gained from using my real name,

Getting back to Tom, I've never met him, but he did contact me a couple times offering to help out when I was a lowly 2p. If I recall correctly, I accepted his kind offer once but turned him down twice, letting him know that there were others, perhaps family members, who would be a more appropriate use for his kind gesture. No rules were broken; he contacted me out of the blue. Maybe he was amused by my role, at the time, as the 2P cat-herder here on FT. Coming dangerously close to that role again!!!

All of the discussion over the past few days has been very interesting. Obviously, there are a number of Stuker fans here who have met him and were positively taken by his good deeds and personality. Others have never met him but are impressed with his accomplishments.

Some paint Kirby and his crew as having malevolent intentions and misguided judgment regarding Stuker.

I know neither man and what I’m about to say is not based on any consulting or employment history with UA . I’m also not speculating about anything Stuker did or did not do. However, my history consulting with major employers’ HR and security departments informs me that an organization’s adverse actions against formerly valued employees, customers, or vendors typically are taken only with great deliberation supported by compelling data. Those not privy to the data often are shocked and left wondering.

I imagine UA made a deal they thought was in their favor. It turned out not to be over time. They hated it. Did it really cost them anything for real, no, but were the flights a cost they saw, yes. As time went on, the cost stood out. New leadership questioned prior leadership's decisions.... "Who cares what those people agreed to 30 years ago, this is nuts! But we are stuck so we might as well make the most of it. But I hate this, so, let's start looking for picky issues in the contract to see if we can get out of this thing. Ah, we got him on X. Cancel!" And maybe from his side, who knows, maybe over time he didn't dot every i or cross every t because he had behaved a certain way for years and he was being feted and celebrated by UA and got surprised when all of a sudden they got picky.

Speculation.

Wow, thanks for those links. Just read the Rothstein story: fascinating!
Seems in the end, all these lifetime passes end up being more of a curse than a blessing.

Kirby seems like a good CEO and a good man. I don't understand the vitriol against him here, except for the mindless "overpaid CEOs are bad" refrain.

As for the lifetime pass, I have mixed feelings. People who bought them (for a WHOLE LOT of money back in the day) seemed to enter into a contract for, well... a lifetime pass. But if said people abused it, playing fast and loose with the gray areas, then not only did they give the airlines the leverage they needed to cancel the pass, maybe it actually makes me sympathetic to the airlines.

And I was on only one flight only over the years with our illustrious multi-million-miler and I can say without any hesitation that the flight crew did NOT like him. He paraded around in a self-made jacket bragging about his miles, spent most of the flight in the galley self-promoting to anyone within earshot about it, and when I inquired with a couple of FAs I got a literal eye-roll and an earful about how they hated working his flights because he acted like he owned the airline. Based on that one experience (which was apparently toward the end of his long run), I have a different opinion than many others seem to.

And if they didn�t abuse it, then the airlines made a bad bargain, and it was on them to honor their contract. Not to whine about it because they didn�t scope the program better.

I feel better, my tarmac transfer quota seems to be 2X per decade! Well, maybe more but it seems like never when I actually need it.

My take is we don't know the terms of the original contract and even if we did, it may have been amended during bankruptcy. The short time I spent with Tom in an IFL was truly pleasant, and I view Kirby as a very capable airline CEO. I can only wish the best for both United and Tom as there are no details on why this has transpired. Like a divorce, don't take sides and wish both the best.

That's interesting, I had a totally different impression the time I met Tom in a lounge. I was unaware United had sold passes like AA so maybe I was in awe. I was flying 300,000 miles a year and just could not fathom how anyone would have reason to do more than a million.

You're right about the vitriol against Kirby, all we know is he has knowledge of various incidents with pass holders. There is no indication whether he was involved in the decisions to take action.

I agree with narvik , the passes were not a blessing for everyone who purchased them. Like real-life lottery winners who end up worse off. For others they were life-changing in a very positive way.

PSA:
I updated the wiki to change the link to Mr. Stuker's business page.
The previous link seems to be going to a hijacked page(?):
https://stukertraining.com/about/

I don't disagree with you at all. Those who bought the passes did nothing wrong in buying them. And clearly airlines went out of their way later on to figure out how to get rid of them. But that doesn't mean that what Kirby said was abuse didn't happen. There is clear evidence that all the things he cited did in fact happen (see the links I posted) when all the passes and cancellations across UA and AA are taken int account.

Reading the tea-leaves (no insider info, just thinking about the mechanics, way back all those years). I'm guessing he was issued a UATP credit at the start of the year and could burn through that, then when it got low, they refilled it, and that's the way it's been ever since. UATP while an international program, can also be limited on a per-airline basis. He essentially had a PassPlus account that never ran dry, again, my thoughts, nothing confirmed here. That'd be the easiest way to administer the thing.

And gave him a private lounge (entrance?) at ORD?

It was also mentioned that Tom is/was a Global Services member, and had more miles than he knew what to do with, so those pass flights very likely counted as revenue flights as far as creditng went.

I only met Tom once, he was a seatmate and I did not even know who he was until an FA said to me (when I asked for a glass of water after using the lav), "do you know who you are sitting next to?"

The FA told me about Tom, I gathered from my conversation with Tom that he traveled a lot, I did not know how much, until the FA filled me in, I did not get the sense that she did not like him as much as she just did not understand anyone wanting to fly that much, which honestly I do not understand either.

Tom was a perfectly fine seatmate, I have had much much worse, that is all I can say about Tom, I do not know him personally, I have never spoken with him since and my only connection with Tom to this day, is this thread.

Kirby has never been my favorite martian, not because CEO, bad, but because I find him obnoxious and many times cheap.

A friend of mine worked with Kirby at the DOD and never had nice things to say about him, honestly, his persona today fits how my friend described him as a budget analyst at the DOD back in the 90s.

Now, none of that speaks to how Tom conducted himself, nor how he used his lifetime pass, I have no clue, I doubt any of us, short of those who know Tom personally know how he used his pass.

The speculation upthread was UA enforced the NDA clause, which led to cancellation of the pass. When you are in the fight club, you do not talk about the fight club.

There's a private ORD lounge entrance? He is EWR based.

Besides flying almost 1MM miles per year, he is a lifetime GS member due to over 4MM. And yes, the flights under the pass were counted as revenue flights.