Hooters Air

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Hooters Air was exactly what it sounded like: an airline created by the restaurant chain famous for orange shorts, chicken wings, and a marketing department that apparently looked at commercial aviation and thought, “We should do that too.” Founded in 2003 by Hooters of America owner Robert H. Brooks, the airline was headquartered in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with flights operated by Pace Airlines.

The carrier used Boeing 737s and a 757 painted in unmistakable orange-and-white Hooters colors, complete with the company’s owl mascot on the tail. Each flight had a traditional flight crew along with two Hooters Girls who assisted with hospitality, while the aircraft offered unusually generous 34-inch seat pitch, leather seats, and complimentary meals on longer flights.

Hooters Air was partly an airline and partly a flying billboard designed to promote the restaurant brand and bring golfers and vacationers to Myrtle Beach. At its peak, its seven-aircraft fleet served 17 destinations, including Newark, Baltimore, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Denver, Orlando, Pittsburgh, and even Nassau in the Bahamas.

The experiment did not last long. Rising fuel costs contributed to the suspension of commercial service in early 2006, and Hooters Air operated its final scheduled flight from Myrtle Beach to Newark on April 17, 2006 — barely three years after taking off for the first time.

Because apparently putting a restaurant in the sky was easier than keeping an airline in the sky.

Our Hooters Air collection celebrates the orange-and-white jets, Hootie the Owl, improbable airline branding, and one of the strangest chapters in early-2000s aviation history.