Originally Posted by stephem

From a cost and a certainty standpoint I'm pretty happy with the years I've spent with NW- I've never, ever, ever, sat in the back on an international flight, and only have a few exceptions on domestic flights. There was a lot of planning and shuffling, but most of the folks on this board will do that, I think there are few here that just tell their corp travel agent "get me from A to B on this date." If you are thinking you are going to get the cheapest coach ticket and always get an upgrade with miles (or even more unlikely a "free" upgrade) on international flights and you find that, then let me know the program you find, I'll be right behind you. I also think NW has bumped up a notch this year, for high mileage fliers we'll be getting 4 SWU's when we cross 160k (2 at 120k and 2 more at 160k).

One final thing to consider if you are going to be a serious high mileage guy and you have some flexibility in how your tickets get purchased (i.e. you are not a slave to a US based corporate travel agent). There are some much better fares for various alliances that depart from some obscure places around the world. So if you can get yourself out there on a one way ticket and you dont need to account for both/all legs of a trip on one expense report, then you might find some creative ways so that you can fly in business class and only pay coach fares, this is the ultimate "free" upgrade. When I hear people telling me they paid $7kUS for a simple roundtrip US-asia, I laugh knowing that I'll get at least 4 trips in paid C back home to the US this year for the price of that single ticket.