With Southwest, you get both. WN will win the Freddies this year. And not by default: they won last year even before the latest take-backs. The Southwest board is the only one not saturated with gripes about changes.

Southwest's biggest take-back of 2002 was deletion of Diet Dr. Pepper from the beverage carts in November. A cruel blow, that. But you still get double credit for on-line bookings, and you still earn a free, unrestricted round trip for 16 credits. You can't beat that.

Northwest will come in second, because their program was strong before and their changes were less than the others'.

I'm sure that the airline executives don't give a rat's about winning the Freddies; they want to know how the program is affecting their bottom line. Otherwise Freddie winners wouldn't eliminate awards and devalue their programs 2 months after winning, something that has happened with depressing regularity. Southwest has so far proved that it is different in this respect. More power to them.