Welcome to the FlyerTalk community nigel-bigel. For sure you have found the site that has the most experts on frequent flying whom do not work for the airlines although some of the posters in these forums do. This is the wn factor that causes the fares to be less to OAK. I would imagine it is rare that he flies to OAK on nw as they do not fly to OAK - but rumors abound that they might in the near future. Without at this point suggesting one airline I do suggest one the most important things that I learned on these boards concentrate your flying on one airline as much as possible. But I think you have gotten that much out of getting the hp comp to silver and actually state your intentions to concentrate in your next sentence. If domestic upgrades are what you are looking for then co or nw is the program to choose. If you are interested in international upgrades than aa might be a better choice for you and you should pose this question on the aa forum. One of the benefits of being gold or plat on either nw or co is that you are allowed to have free companion upgrades (space available.) On nw the companions come after the silver in the prefence order of who gets seats and on co the plat companions come after the plats and the gold companions come after the golds and before the silvers. Here I believe you are talking about mileage upgrades and you can get domestic upgrades for 10k one way on a discount tix. The upgrades would come out the same pool of tix as award tix and so you would have to most likely plan far in advance to get these awards as dtw to the west coast is an award sought after by many travelers. In addition seats may not be released for award availability (elite upgrade or mileage) until shortly before travel. Also mileage awards may not be made less than 3 days before travel. Most posters here do not feel domestic upgrades is a good use of mileage but everyone has to make their own decision of what is best for them. I have in fact used mileage upgrades for companions on dtw-sfo flights when I thought that was the only way I could get them upgraded and in one memorable case I did not make the cut for an elite upgrade. The order of elite complimentary upgrades are; (in a perfect world)
NW plat nw co - gold nw co - silver nw co - plat companions nw co - gold companions nw co
CO plat co nw - plat companions co nw - gold co nw - gold companions co nw - silver co nw y e s Yes if he loves you and wants to stay married. I give my wife the upgrade when only one is available and sit in coach. But it is different for everyone and in fact there is a discussion of this going on right here If international upgrades on inexpensive tix is the primary reason than for sure you should go with AA. But if domestic travel is the major portion of your travel than my recommendation is that you stick with either nw or co. I also have an AMEX and I use it to keep miles available in another airline (dl) just in case of emergencies where it becomes neccessary to get a last minute tix and nw has none available. Of course I worry about being stuck with having to pay a bereavement fare so much that I keep a visa in another airline also. The short answer is no. If you fly on either nw or co you can have the miles put in either wp or op accounts but not transferred. As it appears that the best your husband is going to get is mid-level elite I would recommend that you choose one and concentrate on it. There is no way that 2 silvers = one gold. Yes - big time. AW, known as hp, flights count for mileage on co but only a relatively few hp flights count for mileage with nw. As to whether or not you should concentrate on hp I do not know. Of course I have a bias when it comes to hp and perhaps some one else could better answer this question. Thank you nigel-bigel. I have always been a firm believer in teach something once - learn it twice and for sure we have also spent many hours trying to figure it out.
Also if you choose nw do not forget to go to Northwest Airlines Deals and Promotions and sign up for all the promos. Some require that you sign up prior to travel so this is a very important lesson to get early. Also check back here regularily as for some reason a lot of bonus offers seem to be posted here before they are put online

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[This message has been edited by magic111 (edited 03-09-2002).]