There are plenty of people, places and things in the world that have made it into the Guinness World Records. We’ve covered several of them over the years:
- The youngest person in the world to travel to every country in the world
- The big problem of the largest hotel in the world
- The world’s largest working miniature airport
- The most countries flown by an airline
- Bette Nash was the world’s longest-serving flight attendant (as well as the world’s oldest flight attendant), until her death last year.
We’ve got another one – the person who has flown on the most airlines in the world.
How Many Airlines Are There?
First, let me give you a couple of interesting tidbits: there are roughly 1400 airlines in the world that have an IATA code. They run the gamut from huge to tiny commercial passenger airlines. to privately owned commuter jet companies, and to cargo airlines. So although it might be a nice goal to fly all of them, à la visiting all 50 states (y’all ever see what North Dakota does if you save it for your 50th state?), all 7 continents, or all 195 countries, it’d probably be impossible – partially because of the sheer number, and partially because many aren’t made for passengers.
Meet Indy Nelson
Anyway, a traveler named Indy Nelson has three claims to fame in terms of travel:
- In 2019, he broke the world’s record, at the time, for being the youngest person to go to all sovereign states in the world (age 24 years and 3 days).
- He also broke the world’s record for doing this in the shortest amount of time (539 days).
- AND he broke the world record for flying on the most airlines – 170
A US citizen, Indy had traveled abroad several times as he was growing up. But on his first overseas trip with a friend (instead of with his parents), the travel bug hit him. After that first “adult” trip to Greece (he was volunteering at a camp for Syrian refugees), he signed up for a trip to North Korea during Spring Break. That’s the trip where he decided to go to visit every country in the world.
After taking out an $80,000 loan, Nelson began his quest in 2017, when he was 22 years old. By the time he was done, less than 2 years later, he was 24 years old and had joined the small but elite group who had traveled to every country in the world before age 30. He also had flown on 170 unique airlines, which broke the previous record of 156 airlines, achieved by a Japanese man named Ryuji Furusho from 1996 to 2014.
Challenges Along the Way
Visiting every country in the world isn’t always easy. Sometimes he was simply a tourist, but other times he’d land in a country only to find himself in an active war zone. From Guinness:
Indy tried avoiding conflict zones as much as possible, carefully planning his route around them, but in Africa he found it more difficult due to the volatile nature of some areas.
For example, the day before he went to the Central African Republic, 24 UN personnel were killed there, resulting in 12,000 French troops being deployed to the capital.
“Things happen in 24, 48 hours,” Indy said. “You can’t plan those things out.”
Nelson was also detained 4 times during his travels (in Iran, Libya, Papua New Guinea and Russia), when he had to prove he wasn’t a spy.
“I feared for my life several times,” he told Guinness World Records. “There were definitely several times that I did not think that I was going to get out of that country. By the fourth time, it was like ‘no big deal anymore.'”
Indy’s least favorite country was the Comoros, a small group of islands off the southeastern coast of Africa, where he had encounters with “not too friendly” people. On the other hand, he enjoyed Cambodia the most, citing the culture and “super friendly” locals.
What’s He Up to Now?
Nelson has a YouTube channel where he shows videos of his travels. Oh, and he’s now up to 194 unique airlines.
Of course, all this happened almost a decade ago. Indy Nelson is now a Certified Product Manager (CPM)®, Certified Scrum Professional-Product Owner (CSP-PO)®, PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)®, and Project Management Professional (PMP)®. He’s based in the San Francisco Bay Area, working in high-tech Product Management.
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