Originally Posted by nwflyboy
Thanks for the suggestions. Sounds like my best bet is to call NW Worldperks and see if I get lucky with a cooperative agent (although in my experience they generally seem fairly uncooperative with regard to the details of award travel on partner airlines - the agent I spoke with last time told me KLM "doesn't assign seats" which seemed like a pretty incredible statement).
I have no problems calling NW to get seat assignments for KL flights when booked as a DL award, so I don't see any reason why they wouldn't do the same for a NW award.