First Class Availability Tool?
 

Can anyone point me in the direction of an availability tool to check out possibilities for domestic upgrades? I am new at this on NW as I am a CO Gold.

Secondly, as I understand it, the companion upgrade is only confirmed at the airport a couple hours before the flight?

I do not know of any tools available online for R- availability.

http://www.flyaow.com/classcwt.htm will show you P and F fares and you can make a guess about R.

Someone here ;) apparently has access to a R availability tool but it is only rumours...

You are also correct that GE companions are only allowed to upgeade 2 hours prior to the flight.

The same tools that work for CO will work just fine for NW.

THe P and F fares would both be full fare first, correct? I am assuming that wouldnt show discount first? The flights I am looking at are both 757 from BOS-DTW-SEA. I am assuming the general rule of thumb applies, less trouble upgrading on the weekends versus business days? It looks like the cabin on NWA 757 is pretty big versus upgrades on CO or even my many Super 80 AA flights.

P= full-fare first
F= discount first
R= elite upgrades which apparently, theoretically, presumably, come as a subset of F.

NW has an equal or larger first class cabin than most domestic carriers, especially if you're comparing against a Super 80. Also consider that NW still flies lots of DC-9's with 16 FC seats on routes that other carriers have converted to RJs.
I would agree that some weekend flights (mostly Saturdays) allow for more upgrade opportunity than others. I suspect a Sunday DTW-SEA flight still has some serious upgrade competition.

To clarify a bit, see my changes underlined above. Source is here. FWIW, "F" fares run the gamut from completely unrestricted (wrt changes and refundability) to heavily restricted.