Excess Baggage February 19 2003
I’ve heard that Hooters — the breast and wing empire — now has an airline. Is this true? This can’t possibly be true.
Oh, it’s true. In clear defiance of the old adage, “You can’t soar with the eagles and hoot with the owls,” there is now a HootersAir. It is one thing to use breasts — aka “hospitality” — to lure people in to drop a few bucks for a plate of chicken wings. It is quite another to use them to lure people into something expensive that has wings.
The flights, mainly designed for golfcapades to Myrtle Beach, while not exorbitant aren’t cheap either. You can check for yourself at 1-888-FLY-HOOT. Service from Atlanta to Myrtle Beach begins March 6, to the tune of $258 round trip, including tax. Atlanta to Newark flights ($378) begin March 20. For comparison, you can get to Newark on Delta on March 20 for $206. The only benefits the HootersAir reservations agent could tout for the extra price were more leg room and leather seats.
And no, Hooters girls will not be piloting the plane. The Hooters girls aren’t even allowed to be flight attendants. Your guess is as good as mine as to how close they’ll get to the ... um ... cockpit. There will be two of them to a plane in their cute little outfits, “helping.”
Drink prices are reasonable: Beer, wine and liquor are all $4 per drink. But a ticket agent dodged the in-flight chicken wing question by simply stating that the airline provides “a light, in-flight snack appropriate to the time of flight. It’s not like restaurant fare.”
The airline seems totally serious. No mile-high club hijinks? No greasy wing buckets? And very little “hospitality.” It certainly doesn’t sound like much of a hoot.