It depends. I can survive a Y flight to Europe with family. Which is good, because finding 5 J together is impossible, even if I thought my kids would appreciate and value J. By myself or with one other adult, I'm almost always going to try to find J and usually will be willing to move dates around to get it.

But I would never spend J miles to fly a good chunk of the way there in Y. I could live with SAN-LAX or CDG-DUB in Y (with or without the blocked middle seat), but there's no way I'd fly an itin that had a 4 to 5 hour transcon in Y if I was paying for J.