> ...the government refused because they didn't care about competition or working with JetBlue.

I take it this is your opinion based on your perception?

However from the U.S.News link I posted above

"The judge, who had questioned whether further asset divestitures could make the deal work, said, "The courthouse doors remain open, should the defendant airlines decide to try again."

You can also read the actual ruling [1] which states:

> _"Throughout June 2022, JetBlue made a series of revised offers to acquire Spirit, with increases in per-share price, increases in the reverse termination fee, and commitments to divestitures. Spirit continued to resist, citing continued concerns about the anticompetitive nature of such an acquisition. On June 6, 2022, Mr. Christie received an email from Mr. Hayes with an attached new, revised offer for Spirit Airlines. On June 27, 2022, JetBlue made a further amended offer to purchase Spirit; the Spirit Board did not view this amended offer as better and did not accept it. Instead, Spirit issued another press release on June 28, 2022, reaffirming its commitment to the transaction with Frontier and noting that the “[l]atest offer from JetBlue does nothing to address our Board’s serious concerns that a combination with [JetBlue] would not receive regulatory approval.”_

So even the Spirit board did not prefer this acquisition, even with the divestitures, but acquiesced to expected shareholder concerns on value maximization

[1]https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24362262/jetblue.pdf