Lol you’re hung up on “category,” and they’ve been very clear about their plans. They can’t lie to the investment community and the feds and completely pivot from what they are saying they are going to do.

B6’s category per the DOT is major airline. It’s not a legacy because they didn’t participate in interstate commerce prior to deregulation, so therefore they can never be a legacy, because that’s literally what legacy carrier means. Hence why Alaska and hawaiian are legacies.

B6 still considers itself a LCC (which is low cost carrier…as in the cost structure of the company, not the fares), but their cost structure is now just slightly better than the big 3, and worse than SWA last I checked. It has roughly the same onboard offerings as the big 3, but no domestic first (except for the transcon lie flats). As far as fares are concerned, they call themselves a low fare carrier, but there are routes where they charge more than legacies. That’s more marketing than a label of the airline.

So if you’re trying to label jetblue, they are a major, as are spirit and frontier. The DOT provides that definition. They aren’t a legacy and can’t ever be, because they didn’t exist during deregulation. Their cost structure has been rising, and their product has been moving into that of an international full service carrier. They cater to both business and leisure travelers. They have a vacation company subsidiary, as well as a venture capital subsidiary. So, as far as labels, they are kind of just a hybrid of a premium LCC mixed with offering fair fares, but not low fares and generally not exorbitant fares. They have a good onboard product, trying to grow to be a full US network carrier with further global ambitions.

Label it however you want, but the spirit acquisition has nothing to do with their category or intentions to pivot to be something they currently aren’t; it’s more to do with their network breadth and expanding their current product offering to more of the country.