I believe it was Beth Shultis who, in a Flyer Talk chat, explained that Northwest is interested in rewarding current loytalty rather than past loyalty. Although I myself am a butt-in-seat millionaire (several times), I think she is right in this. The two greatest benefits of elite status,imo,are upgrades and bonus miles. NW has nothing to gain by rewarding past activities with upgrades, and in fact has something to lose by making those upgrades less available to current high-mileage flyers. Nor is there much benefit to the airline in awarding bonus miles for anything other than current flying. The system is that we earn our status year by year, and if we have held the status awhile they may not crash us from plat to nothing in one year. That's o.k. with me.