I tend to agree with Joe B, despite his usual doom & gloom messages. Recently I used 5000 miles on Midwest Airlines to get an Amtrak award ticket worth $40 since I'm not certain of YX's viability. I keep my NWA balance around 100,000 tops & do use the miles quickly. Also, I have a similar balance on DL which I intend to use quickly on NWA. Despite all the no upgrade talk, I fel that as an NWA Gold, NWA will upgrade me when I use DL miles on NWA, as long as I contact NWA & put my WP# on the reservation.