As part of a much larger itinerary, I am booked to fly from DEN to SEA with a NW code on AS metal in about five weeks. Noting the lack of AS certificates in this year's kit, what is the possibility of getting an upgrade to first on this flight?

I searched the forum. The closest answer in terms of relevance is found here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum35/HTML/004716.html

but the answer assumes the existence of these certificates. Unfortunately, the certificates from last year will have expired by the time of my flight.

Since it's a NW ticket, I imagine I will check-in at the NW counter; perhaps they will upgrade me at that point? This is of
course just speculation.