For the past eight years, in fact, Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines have been the will-they-or-won’t-they couple of the airline industry, having repeated merger discussions

Frontier Airlines is exploring a revived bid for Spirit Airlines Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported. The budget carriers recently held talks, though discussions are at an early stage and may not lead to a deal, the WSJ said, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.

If a deal between the two carriers is reached, it would likely happen as part of Spirit restructuring its debt and other liabilities in bankruptcy.” While any potential merger is purely hypothetical and would run into the same antitrust concerns and roadblocks as with the JetBlue takeover,