Pace Airlines

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Pace Airlines began in January 1996 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, operating as Piedmont Aviation Services d/b/a Pace Airlines. Federal approval arrived on March 26, 1996. It started with executive-style Boeing 737 charters for sports teams, entertainers and corporate travelers: the kind of passengers who expected their airport experience to involve fewer lines and more leather.

The carrier was rooted in the old Piedmont aviation orbit and based around Smith Reynolds Airport. Piedmont Aviation Services merged with Hawthorne Aviation in 1998 to form Piedmont Hawthorne Aviation, whose Winston-Salem headquarters remained the corporate home turf for Pace. The airline grew from specialty charter work into larger vacation-charter flying.

In 2001, Pace launched Vacation Express flying, linking several U.S. departure cities with Orlando Sanford and onward Caribbean, Mexican and Central American destinations. In late December 2002, Hooters chairman Robert H. Brooks acquired Pace. Hooters Air launched in 2003, using Pace aircraft and crews, while Pace continued its own charter and operational work from Winston-Salem.

Hooters Air ended public service in 2006, but Pace carried on for several more years. Pace Airlines’ operations closed in September 2009, followed by an involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing that December. The jet set, alas, had been grounded.

Our Pace Airlines collection celebrates a distinctly 1990s-and-2000s charter carrier: Boeing workhorses, sports-team missions, vacation runs and a Winston-Salem aviation legacy that briefly took a very strange detour through airline pop culture.