I want to know if Siliver is worth the effort, as I will probably come up a mileage run short of making it this year. Part of the implied question is whether or not I'll get upgraded very often as a lowly elite. This is my first year even thinking about reaching elite status. My travels are going to be (and have been) a mix of NW/CO metal. 1/2 of my miles are coming from WAS to LAX/LAS (first two trips are on CO and I've found I really like the 738/739) as I'm making prepartions to go back to school to become an air traffic controller. The rest of my travel takes me from LAX to MKE where my family is. On either carrier, routing through a hub east of MKE yields just about as many miles as flying straight across the coast, so it takes 5 trips and change to make the siler. I don't want to go out of my way to spend the money on CO/NW tickets just to find out that I never get upgraded.

Which routings yeild the best chances of upgrades and minimal use of the ERJ/CRJ? I don't mind them for CLE-MKE/CLE-WAS, or EWR-WAS, but anything longer than that I'd rather avoid. IAH-MKE is a stretch in my book. I'm not particular on which carrier I use, although I do appreciate the fact that CO has IFE.