In release 16 of the third-generation project partnership, it has been suggested that hybrid-automatic repeat request (H-ARQ) protocols can be used to ensure robust communications. In this paper, we incorporate H-ARQ in the free-space optical (FSO) communication systems to improve their performance and communication link reliability. We derive novel, to the best of our knowledge, closed-form expressions for the outage probability of the FSO systems under the combined impact of gamma–gamma distributed atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors (PEs) for heterodyne detection and intensity modulation and direct detection techniques. This is accomplished using various H-ARQ protocols, such as, at least once, chase combing, and incremental redundancy (INR). Further, using outage probability expressions, we calculate throughput for the FSO systems using H-ARQ protocols. Useful insights into the FSO system performance are obtained through the asymptotic analysis for the considered H-ARQ protocols and detection techniques. It is observed through the numerical results that H-ARQ with INR performs better than the other considered H-ARQ protocols. We also draw a comparison between the outage performance of an FSO system with boresight PE and without boresight PE. © 2021 Optical Society of America