What happens if a ticket is booked on NWA.com with a WP number that does not match the traveling passenger's name, say a spouse for instance? It appears that it is possible during the booking process, but not sure if anyone has successfully done it. It appears that it's a loophole on other airlines' web sites than some are exploiting.

Last month my daughter and I flew:
1 CO segment, paid for me, award for her.
2 NW segments, paid for me, award for her.
1 HA segment, paid for both.

When I booked the award ticket, she didn't have a WP account, and the PE/GE line just stuck mine in there, I guess. I later signed her up for one. The CO award segment posted to my account (and I'm too busy to call up and pester anyone about exactly how they think I flew on a paid ticket and an award ticket on the same flight at the same time), the NW segments posted to her account, and the HA segment didn't show up in a timely manner at all (I faxed BP's yesterday.)

Given that they'd post an award segment to my account that didn't even have my name on it, I'm not sure what they'd do with paid ones.

Information sharing seems to have gotten more sophisticated (at least b/w DL & NW) regarding ff #'s. DL's system combines your Suffix with your Last Name (not good) when booking on their website, therefore creating a name mis-match with NW. No one on the phone, in the lounge, or at the gate could fix it for me. My only option was to send the boarding passes in for credit. Amazingly (kudos to NW) the flights posted 2 days after they received my FedEx.

I would say the chances of mistakenly receiving credit for any ticket booked and flown on NW is very slim and based on my experience above, same for DL. Not sure about CO, except for the occasional award segment posting on NW as a paid segment.

I tried to do this and it did not work. I was flying for work and a colleague who doesn't fly much offered to credit both flights to my WorldPerks number since they were being paid for from my expense account. NW rejected the credit stating that the names did not match.

Yep same thing here. I told him ahead of time that it wouldn't work, but heck I'd try for extra EQMs from a DTW-MSP-PHX round trip!

Showed up now - thanks, WorldPerks. Interestingly, mine shows G/G and hers K/K, even though we were on a single G-class PNR. That being said, it doesn't seem to make any difference, so I don't really care. My daughter also picked up a 1,000 mile "first flight" bonus, so she actually got more banked miles out of the segment than I did.

As far as ways other people can make banked miles appear in your account, I've long suspected that there isn't really any matching of WorldPerks number to billing information etc. over at the WorldPerks Mall, but I'm not 100% sure.