You can book and change award tickets online at Northwest (and have been able to for the better part of 1 year now). It also costs only 18500 miles right now for a domestic roundtrip (although going to 23500 starting June 1).

In addition, ANYONE can pay 38500 to waive all capacity controls.

What a concept...allowing people to redeem their miles, 24 hours a day.

P.S. If you want to do it by phone, you don't get the 1500 mile discount...and the wait when I tried to call the regular desk (for non-Elites) was 4 minutes.