I do not have NW elite status or status with any of their partners. I have a trip coming up and because of late purchase have some less than ideal seats assigned to me. Looking at the seat map, all seat in coach that are not priority seats are full. It's been this way for weeks, and NW has still be selling coach seats, so I'm pretty sure that there are quite a few coach passengers without assigned seats. The first round of upgrades went through, and the priority seats emptied out quite a bit and now there are many empty priority seats.

Because these empty priority seats are likely not the have elites sitting in them, I would like to secure them for myself. I'm flying a connecting itinerary and the flight I'm worried about is the second of the two.

After searching FlyerTalk and researching the rules my understanding is the following, although I do have some conflicting information:

1. I can check in for both flights on-line 36 hours before departure of the first flight.
2. I can change my seats for both flights to priority seats online 2 hours before departure of the first flight.

So the best I can do is wait until two hours before first flight departure and checkin then? Will Northwest have already assigned these seats to the non-elites who have no seat assignment by that time?

Thanks for any help,
Rocketman