Originally Posted by
chipbennett
Delta has signaled for over a decade that Medallion complimentary upgrades, especially to FC, are essentially going away. I'm past the point of being upset and am at acceptance. It actually works out well when Delta offers such low-price upgrades. I can book MC to follow company travel policy, and then upgrade on my own dime (or RDMs), which also adds to my MQD accrual. And as a side benefit, I no longer pay much attention to upgrade queues. WFBF, and otherwise, view FC upgrades as a surprise bonus.
Complimentary upgrades were the carrot and loss leader when the game was to get business travelers to discretionally direct their share of their firm's spend to a particular airline. The new hook, line, and sinker is lounge access availed to a much larger subset of the population. That has resulted in a fat mid-elite tier, but they are hooked into the Amex/DL ecosystem. TINSTAAFL