A very warm welcome to FlyerTalk!

Is WorldPerks the right program for you? Silver Elites earn a generous 50% mileage bonus and unlimited First Class upgrades on all non-transoceanic flight segments; these benefits are also valid when flying CO. You may also earn EQM by flying AS and – pretty soon – DL. Overall, a strong domestic network (including NW/CO/AS) and generous mileage bonus opportunities make NW a strong choice for the domestic flyer/entry-level elite.

But if you plan on earning 50,000+ miles this year, then you should also take a look at the AAdvantage program as well. AA doesn’t offer free upgrades, but they do provide More Room Throughout Coach and VIPOWs (free systemwide upgrade certificates). AA’s in-flight product is also (slightly) better than NW’s. You won’t earn miles on AA when you travel to China unless you purchase two tickets – one to LAX (or another gateway) and one to PVG/PEK (coded China Eastern flights). Unless money’s no object to you, you should also consider cost – if NW’s significantly cheaper than AA consistently, than WorldPerks is probably the better program for you.

You may wish to read the thread Mileage Runs… A Primer!; this will (undoubtedly) answer many of your questions in-depth.

It seems as though you’ve figured out how to add segments (if now, you can do this on NWA.com by selecting the multi-city option) but you’re having problems pricing your itinerary. More likely than not, this is because you’re using an invalid routing. Since you know how to find a routing, I’ll help you read it:

BWI-BUF:
ROUTING 202 FROM-TO BWI-NW-DTT/CLE/EWR-NW-BUF*
FROM-TO BWI-NW-EWR/CLE/DTT-NW-BUF*

From Baltimore, you can fly to either Detroit, Cleveland (CO) or Newark (CO); then connect to BUF.

The “-“ means “and” and the “/” means “or”; in other words, had it read BWI-DTT-CLE-EWR-BUF, you could fly: BWI-DTW-CLE-EWR-BUF.

Once again, welcome to FlyerTalk -- we look forward to your participation!

[This message has been edited by IndustrialPatent (edited 02-16-2003).]