Winging it
BY JOEL REESE Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Tuesday, June 22, 2004
What's it like to fly
Hooters Air? Our intrepid reporter discovers girls, games and, shockingly, no
chicken wings
My mind boggled when I
envisioned what might happen aboard a Hooters Air plane.
Yes, that Hooters - the restaurant chain that's become a massive
success by catering to the holy trinity of male desires: sports on the TVs,
fried food on the tables and skimpy clothing on the women.
If that's what Hooters
restaurants are like, I figured, surely a flight aboard the relatively new
Hooters Air would be a cataclysm of unbridled hedonism and decadence.
I envisioned thumping
music and pilots break dancing down the aisle. I
foresaw Hooters Girls (that's the official name for the women who work at
Hooters, by the way) giving lap dances on the table trays and feeding me
chicken wings as I reclined in my seat, like a toga-clad Roman lord.
So it was with great
excitement that I accepted the assignment: I would ride on the second Hooters
Air flight to depart the Chicago/Gary International Airport.
"Hooters will
bring some fun into the travel industry," airline president Mark Peterson
had said at a
And hey, who doesn't
like fun? I know I do.
So I'm in my seat,
ready for some scantily clad entertainment. Or, if nothing
else, surely some chicken wings.
Then a sweet, high-pitched
voice, as welcoming and cozy as a warm plate of Southern biscuits, comes over
the loudspeaker: "My name is Lindsey and this is Katie, and we're the
Hooters Girls on today's flight!"
The plane ascends like
a batch of chicken wings rising majestically from the deep fryer, and Hooters
Air takes flight.
Glum in
Before the 8 a.m.
journey begins, the tiny Gary/Chicago International Airport is the furthest
thing from a party one could imagine.
Hooters
passengers-to-be sit glumly on unyielding black leather chairs in a
fluorescent-lit room. The only noise comes from the surprisingly loud hum of
the soda machine; the orange and blue balloons from the Hooters press
conference two days earlier hang half-filled from the walls, forlorn and
flaccid.
One of the people here
is Maysoon Khalaf, a Muslim woman from
Khalaf says she's not
offended by the clothing worn by the Hooters Girls: "It doesn't make me
uncomfortable - I see this at the beach all the time," she says.
Nevertheless, she's
not completely at ease with the day's anatomically oriented theme.
"I don't know, ... I just, I don't feel right," she says, noting
her husband, Jamal, bought the tickets without knowing of the connection
between Hooters Air and the restaurants. "If I had known about this, I
wouldn't have flown on it."
Jamal, it seems,
doesn't have such a problem with the flight. "I think I'll like it,"
he says.
Will others like it as
well? Aviation analyst John Pincavage isn't sure.
"It's a novelty
airline," he says. "The fares are pretty reasonable - and I guess it
has the extra added attraction of the Hooters Girls. But will it catch on? The
jury will be out for a while."
Hooters Air began in
March 2003 and flies out of only a handful of airports, including Fort Myers,
Myrtle Beach and Nassau in the Bahamas.
The airline hopes to
announce another destination soon, although Peterson declined to say where
until the contract is finalized.
So the Khalafs and the
rest of us (the flight is about half-full) board the plane, where we're greeted
by the smiling Hooters Girls. The flight features two Girls, three non-Hooters flight
attendants and two pilots.
The plane taxis down
the runway and heads skyward, and the flight is disappointingly uneventful for
the first 30 minutes or so of the two-hour flight.
The two women (I mean,
Hooters Girls) wear their Hooters regalia and sit together at the front of the
plane, talking quietly. No music is heard, and, sadly, no one is break dancing
down the aisle.
Finally, one of the
Hooters Girls goes to the back of the plane and begins walking up the aisle.
So this is where the
fun begins, I think. I wonder what she's going to say to me - undoubtedly it
will be quite the salacious offer. Here she comes ...
"Do you want a
sausage biscuit?" she asks, holding out what appears to be, indeed, a
sausage biscuit.
"Uhh, no
thanks," I say.
I guess the question,
"Coffee, tea or me?" comes later in the
flight.
She doles out more
sausage biscuits, then sits back down. No, this is not
the riotous ride I envisioned.
Then one of the non-Hooters-Girls
flight attendants lets us in on more bad news: There will be no chicken wings.
Something about logistics and the deep fryer and "We're very sorry"
and all that. (Hooters Air apparently hopes to solve this conundrum one of these
days.)
"Man, I was
hoping to get me some wings," one passenger behind me grumbles.
So wait - what's the
deal here? Is this just a regular plane, with the only difference being two
women in tiny orange shorts and the ubiquitous Hooters logo plastering every
free inch of space?
Then one of the
Hooters Girls takes the microphone, and things change again.
Trivia time
The perpetually
smiling pair announce they're going to begin a trivia
contest, followed by a game of charades.
"You can ring
your little ... flight attendant ... thing-y, and we'll come around," the
shorter, blonder one (Lindsey Martin of
The trivia questions
are taken straight from the in-flight magazine, which is cleverly dubbed
"Hooters." The questions include "When did Hooters Air take its
first flight?" and "How many Hooters restaurants are there in
"TWO!"
passenger Jeff Deal of
"No, it's
four," corrects Katie Urbanik of
"No, it's two -
one is in
The girls confer for a
moment, whispering to each other. "Well, my sheet says four, so I'm going
with four," Urbanik finally says.
"Oh, man - it's a
trick question!" Deal says. (A subsequent trip to Hooters.com finds Deal
was correct, incidentally.)
During the trivia
game, one couple sits quietly, reading decidedly un-Hooters-like material:
David Anderson holds a copy of the academic magazine, "Structure and
Architecture." His bespectacled wife, Jenny Snider, reads Maya Angelou's
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."
Both, it turns out,
are architects from
"So what are you
two doing on this plane?" I ask them. "You don't seem like Hooters
types."
Snider turns a
mockingly glowering look toward her husband.
"I booked the
tickets,"
"It is
cheap," Snider concedes.
OK, fine - you're just
here for convenience. But what about the camera
"I'm documenting
the trip for my family," he insists. Snider rolls her eyes.
Despite her
misgivings, Snider says the flight has turned out well enough, so far:
"It's fine," she says, glancing over to the two Hooters Girls.
"You know, it's ... whatever. No, it's fine. Really.
It's fine."
Funnily, though, Snider's
trip is somewhat clandestine: "I didn't tell anyone I was flying on
Hooters," she confides.
"One of my
friends said, 'You are legendary!'æ" he
says. "But another guy said I was an idiot because I was flying on Hooters
with my wife."
Life is a charade
Enthusiasm for the
trivia game wanes as people realize they're not going to win a prize for
getting the right answer.
So the Girls begin a game
of charades, and I'll be dipped in batter and dumped in boiling oil if it isn't
pretty fun.
Urbanik walks up and
down the aisle, collecting suggestions written on napkins from the crowd.
One of the clues is
"The Howdy Doody Show," so Martin gamely climbs onto Urbanik's lap
and starts moving stiffly, like a ventriloquist's dummy.
Someone shouts the
answer, so Urbanik moves onto the next clue. She points out the window to the
passenger's right, then at her butt.
"Left
Behind!" I find myself yelling. Urbanik points at me and claps. I am
strangely elated by this minor victory.
A quick trip to the
Khalafs finds them watching the game with bemused smiles.
"We're not too
good at trivia," Jamal says, but the couple plays along anyway.
So, OK, it's fun. It's
a disappointingly tame fun (the Girls' minuscule clothing aside) - not exactly
the outrageous bacchanalia I'd envisioned. But it's enjoyable enough.
It's not easy to keep
the light-hearted ball rolling, Martin admits: "It's like acting,"
says the 20-year-old, who's a student at
And then there are the
orange shorts. "There's not a girl in the world who would wear these
shorts without these," Urbanik says referring to the constricting panty
hose. "Because they pull you in, a little bit."
After about 20 minutes
of charades, the girls sit down, and the flight starts its descent to
The landing is a
little bumpy, but we step into the sunny
Would I fly Hooters
again? Sure, I guess. I don't know that everyone shares that sentiment, though.
"I don't know -
maybe," Maysoon Khalaf says. "Probably not."
Her husband, though,
doesn't have such reservations.
"It was fine,
except for the landing," Jamal says. "It was fine. I liked it. It was
comfortable and fun."
Hooters Air site :www.hootersair.com
Aviation analyst John Pincavage's site :www.pincavage.com