Dear Flyertalk members,

Last week I saw an article in a magazine about a young Dutch student who explained his mileage running. He travels in weekends to gain his miles, and uses those in the holidays for vacations. He said he did this so often, he has been in 60(!) countries in the past year. He did all this on his student wage (which, in Holland is usually never higher than €500,- per month).

Since I'm an Aviation Engineering + Security & Technology student in Amsterdam I got really interested in this story. I'm 20 years old so I have a long time of collecting miles ahead of me (I hope). And my brother lives on the other side of the world, so this might come handy. I started googling about mileage running for hours, but I just cant understand this method.

I understand that you get way more miles by zigzagging rather than booking a direct flight and you reach platinum status much easier. But I'll try to explain the part that I dont understand here.

Lets say you book a MR for 500$ and you make 15.000 miles from this. With the 15.000 miles you book your 'real' holiday. Now, you have still paid 500$ right? And how do you know the 15000 miles you got, are worth the 500$?

I really hope someone can explain this method to me (maybe an example run from Amsterdam?).

Kind regards,
Tim

PS: What do the letters like "Z Fare" mean and/or where can I find these defenitions?