NWA Adds PerkChoice for Award Travel

From the Northwest Airlines website, a new way to buy seats with cash and miles combined:

Now there's more flexibility, affordability and choice when booking travel with Cash and Miles.

• PerkChoice lets you use your WorldPerks miles for one half of your roundtrip and cash for the other.
• This all-new exclusive offer will provide options for WorldPerks members to book travel if a PerkSaver award seat is available on only one way of a roundtrip.
• WorldPerks members can use as few as 12,500 miles and there are no time or date restrictions on any Northwest flights.

I don't know whether this will be a good thing or a non-event. I do know that everyone I speak to about traveling on FF miles on NWA tells me they can never find seats. One couple I know has loads of miles, but they wind up either donating them or using them for hotel points, because they can never find WorldPerks seats for the flights they want.