Hooters will end last flights out of Gary on Jan. 9

Hooters Air will suspend its last flight out of Gary/Chicago International Airport until March 6, leaving the airport without regularly scheduled passenger service for the first time in almost two years.

The last Hooters Air flight to St. Petersburg/Clearwater will take wing from Gary/Chicago on Jan. 9. It follows the earlier suspension of flights to Las Vegas, and Myrtle Beach, S.C.

The suspensions are "seasonal adjustments" made necessary by "the high cost of fuel and low participation," according to a release posted on Hooters' Web site.

Airport officials have been told the flights will resume in March and are taking Hooters at its word.

"We believe what they tell us," airport director Paul Karas said. "And they told us they will be back in March."

In the meantime, airport officials continue to talk with other airlines about starting up passenger service, Karas said.

The suspension of passenger service comes just weeks after Gov. Mitch Daniels and other top state officials expressed faith in the airport's potential.

The governor and John Clark, chairman of the newly formed Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority both said the airport may be a good place for the RDA to make one of its first investments. The airport is being pitched as both a passenger facility and cargo hub.

The airport has had regularly scheduled passenger service since Southeast Airlines took its inaugural flight from Gary/Chicago to St. Petersburg/Clearwater in February 2004. Hooters Air began flying out of the airport just four months later, with its inaugural route to Myrtle Beach.

Southeast ceased operations the end of November 2004, after flying 50,000 passengers out of Gary/Chicago in eight months. That left the air to Hooters.

Before Southeast Airlines started flying out of Gary, the airport had intermittent passenger service, with Pan American Airways flying its last flight out in June 2002.

Hooters Air appears to be re-evaluating all its routes. At the same time as it announced the suspensions of Gary/Chicago's Las Vegas and Myrtle Beach flights, it also suspended Myrtle Beach flights from Baltimore, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Nassau and Newark.

Hooters will end all service from the Greater Rockford Airport, in Illinois, on Jan. 5. Hooters said that airport's incentives to a competitor and increased costs prompted the move.