Why Index full scan path not considered

We fetched the 10053 trace for both OFE 19.1 and OFE 11.2. What we see is , in 11.2 the best cost comes to be 2.000464 i.e the index unique scan path. An optimizer evaluated table scan vs index unique scan path but there was no index FFS path cost evaluation. In the 19c trace we are seeing the new "index FFS" access path evaluation and that cost endup as 2.000000 and thus chosen as the best path in 19c.

So my question is,

1)If the index ffs path was not possible for delete statements and was introduced in 19c?

2)To handle such a scenario if hinting the query is the only option?

DELETE FROM TAB1 WHERE CMP_ID = :b1 AND EP_DT = to_date(:b2,'DD-MON-YYYY');

Here an unique index TAB1_PK exists on column cmp_id, EP_DT.