To achieve gold by the end of August, I made a MR on NW by flying BWI-MSP-MEM-MKE-DTW-MSP-BWI a few days ago. I got upgraded in the silver window for all segments but MKE-DTW (A319, tuesday morning). However at MKE when I checked in, the agent looked at my record for a few minutes then asked, "You are flying to DTW, then to MSP, then to BWI?" I said "Yes". Then she said with a strange expression on her face,"Why are you doing this?" I said "for a few more miles to hit gold elite status". Then she said,"sorry, sir, but I have to discuss with the supervisor to give you boarding passes". She then went back to the office and spent a few minutes and then gave me the boarding passes and said "Have a nice day". Is it really worth her to discussing it with her supervisor? Is my itinearry so unnormal? I wasn't asked when I checked in at BWI for BWI-MSP-MEM-MKE.

What happened later is that my luggage didn't arrive at BWI on the flight I was on due to short connection time (51 minutes in DTW or 30 minutes in MSP). When I filed a claim for my mishandled luggage, the luggage agent refused to give me a travel voucher saying that this is not their fault because the connection time is too short. Is this right? I didn't say anything but said I would like to pick my luggage up when it arrived. Later when I picked my luggage, I told the other luggage agent that I did not get a travel voucher for this; she said "I could give you one" and handled me a PD800 for $25 off for any >$75 fare.