It has been clear for several years now that upgrades are no longer the primary benefit of medallion status at any level.

Delta is selling F tickets for decent prices, and this is a win for most customers because we are given the option of sitting in F. When domestic F used to be $2K+ for an advanced purchase mid-con flight, it was not really an option for most people (because it was such a waste of money), and some people got lucky with upgrades sometimes.

WFBF used to be an annoying and unhelpful comment, IMO. Now it's actually true.

That said, life was so much easier when mid-con F was $2k+ and transcon F/J was $3k+ -- you didn't even have to think as buying F was not an option. So you just hoped you were high enough on the priority to get the upgrade (or used FT tricks like calling in at midnight when the windows opened before the process became fully automated and locked down).

Now I have to run the equation of do I pay for F or chance the upgrade? Especially if I'm flying, say, mid-day on a Tuesday when the chances of an upgrade should be higher. Decisions, decisions. Life is so hard now!

Presuming that's talking about a round-trip price, that's what I was used to paying over at VX. Yes, I'd play some games (DCA-DAL-LAX-SEA was a favorite move since I'd get three meals timed out roughly with three "normal" meals) but I generally considered a "reasonable" price for a one-way nonstop at that point to be about $1100. This was 5-6 years ago, mind you, not the 1980s...

If you're talking one-way prices, then given the current coach situation I simply wouldn't have started flying. The trip to Salt Lake City (in about 2014) where a railroad meltdown effectively forced me to fly would have been a one-off, and I might well have just flown to Chicago to avoid getting "stuck" with a misconnect or planned on a possible CHI-DEN flight as a fallback and left it at that.

^ to M-fare!