10000 miles to upgrade?
Where did you hear this one?
It makes no sense, upgrades for miles
have always been available in unlimited
quantities, regardless of elite status,
of course you need the miles

The 72 hr confirmed upgrades are a replacement for the ELTC. Think of it as paperless ELTC. There may be trouble getting these with the additional NW folks, but they are free.

As for upgrading America West flights as a onepass elite. The folks at the Onepass service center have always taken care of this for me. One time an AW agent at JFK wouldnt let me use a space available upgrade, I was flying JFK-LAS-SAN. First class on JFK-LAS was sold out, but there were several seats on the LAS-SAN flight. The AW agent said I could only upgrade that segment in Vegas(Not true). So I called the OnePass Elite line, and they got me the upgrade.