Spirit Airlines (NYSE: SAVE), the discount airline that at one time had agreed to be acquired by Frontier Group Holdings (NASDAQ: ULCC) before jilting Frontier for another, is being forced to fly alone. Investors are rallying into Frontier shares on the news, sending the stock up 11% as of 3 p.m. ET.

Frontier's business plan was borrowed from Spirit, and when the two airlines announced plans to merge in February 2022 to create the nation's fifth-largest airline, there was a lot of excitement about the combination. But those plans were thwarted by JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ: JBLU), which stepped in with a bid of its own and ended up with an agreement to buy Spirit.

Frontier warned during the bidding war that regulators would likely frown on a JetBlue/Spirit combination, and that prediction proved accurate. On Monday, JetBlue and Spirit abandoned their merger plans after the U.S. government successfully sued to block the combination.

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Source Fool.com