Porcepic

The best XP/€ ratio will be obtained with short international flights in business class.
AF/KL is a safe way to earn miles as all AF/KL-coded flights earn miles/XP, even the cheapest fares, which may not be the case on partner airlines.
Cheapest fares usually require at least 1 night at destination (Saturday or Sunday).
AF/KL fares usually allow you to do some transfers at CDG and/or AMS for free. Stopovers will increase the fare class and thus the price.

Given all these elements, the best XP run would be something like AAA-CDG/AMS-AMS/CDG-BBB-AMS/CDG-CDG/AMS-AAA with AAA and BBB somewhere in Europe and a night at BBB, all in J on AF/KL. You will find some great examples in this thread.
This may be nonetheless subject to exogenous parameters (e.g. how easily and cheaply you can position to some specific points in Europe).

Intercontinental flights would yield a worse XP/€ ratio but will give you a far more comfortable experience and better souvenirs (which is not the point of a XP run).

Zarmakuizz

As far as I remember: Alitalia has some flights from BRU/GVA to Spain, AF/KLM has some flights between GVA/MUC/STR/FRA/DUS to CDG to AMS to : BLL, Norway, and other Northern Europe countries (mainly KL-only destinations). Those are the most common profitable routes, and doable over a week-end.

Concerto

Got another European ticket at short notice and I think the €187 price was excellent for a departure in less than one week. Right over the Easter weekend too. The routing is simply GVA-AMS-DUS(KL)/DUS-CDG-GVA(AF), so not anything particularly exciting. But it's a ratio of €9.35 per XP, given that the itinerary above yields 20 XPs (in Economy of course). Anything less in 10 is good deal in my book.

fifty_two

no written rules , but you need to do some brainstorming

• Destinations: countries/continents/zones = nothing special , but better to transit trough AMS/CDG .
• Airlines = depends whats your locationn and where you want to fly
• Stopovers? = yes , definitely , this can maximise your gains
• Eco/E+/Biz/First (erm maybe not First for me) = if you fly to a far far away destination and book bizness class , better to add stopovers
• Length of stay (probs include 1 Saturday night?) = thats a separate topic , which affect the price of the ticket
• Or any criteria I might have not thought about = time of the year you want to travel and book your ticket

because of these changes , in my case i am winning a bit , cause i am often flying cheap long haul flights with stopovers and often with other airlines than airfrance or klm.

However it depends on my travel plans and origin/destinations airports

Masterfrog

I can't find it from Spain now. I thought it was more or less permanent price. But I'm pretty sure it will come back. There were tons of cheap fares from Spain all year when I looked at it.
Anyway, the trick for this nice XP run is starting from Southern Europe because it doesn't really make sense to stop in Paris or Amsterdam to go to Tel Aviv so you can find the best deals from Southern cities.
Rome, Lisbon are good options too.
The new search is horrible to find the cheapest dates. You have to click every date to find the best deal now.
Anyway I found this interesting Rome-Tel Aviv return ticket earning 78 XP in business for 438 euros though. I guess there are other great opportunities with Tel Aviv.

Concerto

Definitely good, that yields an XP ratio of €5.63 per XP more or less. Fancy visiting Tel Aviv actually, but always worried about having UAE and Muscat stamps in my passport. Maybe it's the other way around that could be difficult, though. Is this fare generally available or only seasonal (i.e. the summer, when it's hot)?

f0zzyNUE

in case you need to go to oslo you can also gain good XP with routing to sandefjord (torp airport) a bit south of oslo.
XXX-CDG-AMS-TRF and return for 420€ (90XP) - at least from German and Swiss airports

Concerto

Oh very nice, F0zzy, that seems to route through both CDG and AMS in both directions. It would yield 90XPs and is a reasonable price too. I would probably be starting in DUS, but maybe ZRH instead. I see that's on lastminute.de which is pretty good I think.

EDIT- I don't know how to book that on lastminute.de, it's just awful. When's someone going to create a website that you can actually easily book flights from? How did you do your initial search? On Kayak? (Obviously not, Kayak doesn't work either).

On expedia.de I can get it to price up by plugging in DUS-CDG-TRF and back. The systems automatically selects a route through AMS. But it prices at €526 (from ZRH at €551).

Is it for a specific time of year? Because one window of opportunity is the 2nd week of July, but I can't see anything at a reasonable price (I only looked at Flugladen.de, can't get the others to work). One problem with me is, I have neither the time nor patience to fiddle around with it. If it's not fairly easily bookable, I usually just let it drop. So I suspect the BLL or TRF run is something I will never do.

f0zzyNUE

Concerto

Ok, thanks F0zzy, I'll have a look at it. I think this run is worth doing if it can be booked.

AurelAF96

However poor miles earn

I hope AZ will still flying to keep earn easily miles and XP

f0zzyNUE

Since Flying Blue changed to revenue based mileage on AF/KL there are no mileage runs on those carriers anymore only XP runs are still kind of cheapish

AurelAF96

Only if you fly on AF/KL marketed flights in that case of course no mileage runs
But you can fly AF/KL on AZ or DL marketed flight and then you will earn a good amount of miles

Concerto

That is indeed what I was thinking because I am not sure it is fair to drag my partner, who is crediting to AirEuropa SUMA, on this trip. SUMA seems to yield so few miles that it's laughable. And who knows if AirEuropa might go the way of Air Berlin
Berlin ...

Goldorak

Yes, but no one does mileage runs anymore as you can't achieve or renew a status with miles now, whatever you fly AFKL or other Skyteam carriers. XP runs is the new "trend"