Sometimes the journalism landscape exists in a mental universe that the rest of us don’t live in.

We all know what life is like in the United States and across the world right now. Inflation continues to drain people’s resources. Wage levels fail to keep up with rising costs. People are falling behind and anxious about the future.

Yet when a major U.S. airline announced that it will soon pack the front of its planes with a new fare class branded to its high-priced Mint product, many top outlets for travel news took the moment to applaud the expansion of luxury-level seating—and pretty much ignored the fact that the additions will come at a knee-knocking cost for the majority of passengers. 

It happened this week when struggling JetBlue announced that it will reconfigure the cabins of its aircraft to add so-called “Mini Mint” First Class seating.

Countless travel blogs hailed the change as if their authors were investors. 

“Absolutely the right move,” said one popular airline blog. “Most innovative,” crowed another. “Long overdue and great news,” exclaimed a third

Thank you, at least, to View from the Wing, whose writer, Gary Leff, acknowledged up front that JetBlue’s changes, while popular among airline influencers and journalists, will mean that “economy flyers face tough cuts.”

Tough cuts in economy? What does he mean?

You won’t find the answer at CNBC. It’s one of the outlets that gushed about the addition of JetBlue’s higher-priced seating—even dubbing it, adorably, “Junior Mint.” As a sign of where CNBC’s true priorities lie, it never bothered to mention that JetBlue will only be able to squeeze in those new premium seats by compressing the space available to every single person in the largest section of the plane: economy class.

That’s right. JetBlue’s planned reorganization of its cabins will cut seat pitch in economy class by 2 full inches, from 32 inches to 30 inches.

Seat pitch is the distance measured from one spot on an airline seat to the same spot of the seat directly in front of it. 

Squeezing every passenger in economy class down to just 30 inches robs value from a majority of customers who fly with JetBlue. 

Even most media outlets that did note the new hardship facing average spenders did so near the bottom of their posts, and some seemed positively giddy about it.

“JetBlue plans to introduce this product in a ridiculously efficient way,” said one. “How is that possible? Well, JetBlue will eliminate its industry leading seat pitch in economy.”

How efficient! How clever! Crush the little guy!

Let’s get this straight. JetBlue is trashing the “industry leading” amount of space the airline gives the majority of us.

Supplying generous legroom for its standard product was a basic principle of JetBlue when it was founded, and one reason many travelers still choose to fly with the airline. 

But soon, the legroom offered by JetBlue will be no better than what’s on much of United Airlines’ fleet or on many of American Airlines’ planes. 

The travel press has done a huge disservice to the majority of Average Joe flyers by burying word of the true degradation of service at JetBlue, which has already betrayed its original promise of free checked bags with a series of barrier-breaking fee hikes.

The squeeze on JetBlue’s core seating class will also grant typical passengers much less space for the carry-on bags that the airline only recently began allowing passengers to bring aboard. Is that hand baggage allowance soon to be another broken promise that JetBlue made to the market?

It’s all part of a troubling ongoing media habit of obsessing and fawning over luxury products at the expense of people who will actually make the majority of purchases. 

So Frommer’s will come out and say it: JetBlue’s decision to take space away from average people stinks. Why bother choosing JetBlue at all if its seats will soon be just as cramped as every other airline’s? And it’s disgraceful to see so many observers treat regular travelers as if they’re invisible.

The consistent abasement of the standard airline product is a lot more newsworthy to most of us than the fortune-chasing of luxury embellishments.

May we remind the airlines and their sycophants that average people make up the majority?

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