Jiburi,
Good find! ^

No, not at all.

A few months ago, I booked ...SEA-NW-HNL-HA-KOA-HA-HNL-CO-LAX... for the 35K, even with a stopover in HNL (final destination was KOA).

doh. I thought that's how it should have worked, but the phone agents had me convinced that it was supposed to be two awards. Oh well.

I think KE and AF are the only ST partners with real int'l F. But we're not allowed to book AF F awards for some reason. NW already considered CO BF as an F award. That's not new.

Burn them while they're hot!
 

Well this change has inspired me to start using the meager amount of miles in my account. I just booked a South American trip for the old 35k mile award, and will look to burn another 35k trip by the end of the week. I'll earn another 35k by the end of the year and hope to spend that as well! :)

After several years of buying whatever's cheapest to Europe and just barely making Silver each year on NW, I was finally induced to spend most of my money at NW after flying WBC on an award ticket this year. I will even make Gold this year and was thinking of going for Plat because of the lounge access.

But now, now they just lost me, I think. I'm just not willing to use 100,000 miles for WBC when I can fly twice to Europe for that amount. Coupled with the hoops I have to go through to get any award seat to Europe, this devaluation of miles discourages me from spending more to fly NW. I'll go back to whatever's cheapest and try to make Silver each year if I come close, but I'm not going to worry about it. I'm pretty sick of Spinzels anyway.

I wish the segment rule would apply retroactively for this year. It would save me from maybe taking a mileage run, though frankly I'm a bit confused as to how to get a good routing.

As for the increased mileage awards, I'm very disappointed. There's no way around how unfortunate this is. Especially Australia. We don't have direct service like *A or OneWorld so I have suffered through a routing like MSN-MSP-EWR-DXB-KUL-MEL just to get there, and now they go and raise the miles required to do so and that's higher than what the competiting alliances offer and they have MUCH better and more direct routings.

Wow- just noticed the increase in miles to 150K for biz from 110K. And the timing is awful, since I was planning on booking something in May or June for April 2006 travel. I certainly knew this was a possibility, but this is a pretty steep increase. NWA will probably justify this by saying that they offer many more mileage earning promotions than most competitors...

This would be ok only if they increase availability....

A question
 

Could anyone answer the question:

Will the mileage increase for WBC award take effect for trips BOOKED after March 1, 2005?

In the other words, if I BOOK these trips BY March 1, 2005 for future travel, does the mileage required stay same as current level?

The mileage increase will take effect on March 1, 2005 itself.

So, if you book a WBC award ticket to Asia on February 28, 2005 for travel on August 1, 2005, your mileage required is 90k.

That would be IF ... and thats a big IF there are award seats still available...

redundant post

Exactly - NWA WBC award availability sucks. It is time for me to look at other options -- I have been holding out with NW - but UA offers so many better options, I think it is time to make the change.

Same yearly statements. Some stay, some go, others come here. The point is that, in general, the grass is not always greener elsewhere. For me award availability works. I get the flights I want, I get the upgrades to WBC I want.