Tony Tye, Post-Gazette "Hooters girls" prepare to cut a cake at a press conference Friday inaugurating Hooters Air's new direct route from Pittsburgh to Myrtle Beach. Click photo for larger image.

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. -- For Dan Shepeck, flying Hooters Air had nothing to do with the buxom young waitresses in white tank tops and skimpy orange shorts.

The color of money made him a Hooters customer.

Shepeck and his golfing buddies usually drive 11 hours from Mount Pleasant to Myrtle Beach for a winter vacation. This weekend, Hooters Air whisked them to the Carolina coast in 75 minutes on $213 round-trip tickets.

A direct commercial flight from Pittsburgh International Airport to Myrtle Beach did not exist until Hooters Air launched the route Friday.

Shepeck, 43, said the Hooters girls -- that's the politically incorrect term that airline executives insist on using -- created a stir in the media, but never got his heart pumping. He was more excited about his own bottom line.

"This is all about price and nonstop service," Shepeck said. "Before this deal came along, you could fly from Pittsburgh to Myrtle Beach, but it cost $260 or $270, and you could spend five or six hours in airports with layovers."

Hooters Air has just six planes and a schedule so limited that it will operate four days a week in Pittsburgh. All of its flights from Pittsburgh International are direct to Myrtle Beach, where the 2-year-old airline is headquartered.

It's a humble beginning, but a bold one. Hooters Air is a startup in an industry where losses, bankruptcies and failures have become routine since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The airline's financial clout comes from the Hooters restaurant chain, a privately held 21-year-old company with 400 locations and 70 more on the way. A year from now, Hooters also will open a Las Vegas casino.

	Tony Tye, Post-Gazette Hooters Air has six planes and will operate four days a week in Pittsburgh. Click photo for larger image.

Hooters Air President Mark Peterson said consumers remain baffled as to why a successful restaurant chain would dabble in the unprofitable airline industry. The answer boils down to a man on a mission.

Hooters Chairman Bob Brooks always wanted an airline, so he gambled his fortune on the venture. He acquired the old Pace Airlines in December 2002 and stamped it with his Hooters brand.

Boarding passes contain a Hooters menu. Orange-and-white planes are adorned with the restaurant chain's trademark owls. A minimum of two scantily clad Hooters waitresses interact with customers on every flight.

More traditional flight attendants, male and female, still handle the safety announcements and grunt work. They wear neckties, white shirts and sober blue suits. The crew is overlooked compared to the Hooters girls, just as the buttoned-down accountants in a casino go unnoticed alongside cocktail waitresses.

Peterson said the in-flight mission of his Hooters girls is to make the ride a bit more enjoyable. They play trivia games with fliers, pass out small vegetable trays and promote the restaurants where they work.

Peterson casually refers to his charges as "girls," and they answer without any offense.

"The Hooters girl is an icon," he said in explaining why nobody seems bothered by the semantics.

Erica Dircks, a Hooters waitress based in Myrtle Beach, said her smart and ambitious female friends have never criticized her for working at a restaurant that requires her to wear a suggestive uniform. Dircks seemed as comfortable in her shorts and tank top as she did with the airline's sexual innuendos. Hooters Air signs announce that one-way flights start at $69.

Dircks has spent two years as a Hooters waitress and one as a member of the flight crew. She said it's been fun and helped put her through Coastal Carolina University. She will graduate this spring with a political science degree, and she said she has been accepted to law school at Columbia.

Do diners or fliers ever cross the line and get crude? "Not as much as you'd expect," she said.

Hooters has built its restaurant brand around attractive females, so it makes perfect sense to have them on the airline, Peterson said.

Airline consultants, he added, have suggested that the girls are unnecessary. He always replies the same way: "Without them, we wouldn't be Hooters."

Heather Trushel, general manager of the Hooters restaurant in Station Square, supplied four of her employees to hype the maiden flight at Pittsburgh International Airport.

Asked whether a woman must be good-looking to get a job at Hooters, Trushel replied, "Is that a trick question?"

"We hire the girl who's the all-American cheerleader type," Trushel said. "The girl next door."

Hugh Hefner used that very description to describe the women he picked as centerfolds for Playboy magazine.

Peterson blanched at any comparisons to Playboy, saying the Hooters girls wouldn't even receive an "R" rating.

Still, like Playboy, Hooters publishes a magazine. It features photo layouts of its waitresses in bikini competitions and on trips to entertain U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. The magazine is available on every Hooters Air flight.

No first-class section exists on Hooters planes, but the seats are all leather and the leg room is abundant, even for travelers who are well over 6 feet tall.

Men, women and children were aboard the first flight from Pittsburgh to Myrtle Beach. Seventy-seven of the 132 seats were occupied, though a dozen were filled by Myrtle Beach boosters, including Mayor Mark McBride.

The Pittsburgh area ranks 10th in supplying vacationers to Myrtle Beach. McBride hopes direct service from Hooters Air will bring more vacationers to his town.

Dan Shepeck, who has golfed in Myrtle Beach for 12 straight winters, said the new airline is all he could have asked for. He would fly it again -- with or without the Hooters girls -- provided that the price was right.