At a ceremony last month marking the delivery of a newly overhauled Dash 8 to Honolulu-based Island Air, ExelTech announced that it secured C$7 million in new contracts this year from five regional airlines from as far afield as French Guyana to perform heavy maintenance at its facilities in Montreal. Three Latin American airlines, including Caribbean Star, Air Jamaica Express and Air Guyane, joined Island Air and Hyannis, Mass.-based Cape Air in a scramble to secure overhaul work for their aging fleets of turboprops.

Island Air, a code-share partner of Aloha Airlines, has recruited ExelTech to perform D-Checks on two Dash 8-100s, the first of which left Montreal last month for the 5,000-nm trip home. Cape Air, meanwhile, will get C-Checks, interior upgrades and avionics mods on its three ATR 42s, recently acquired for a new code-share deal with Continental Airlines.

Among the Latin American airlines, Air Guyane signed for heavy maintenance checks on a pair of ATR 42s, while Antigua’s Caribbean Star agreed to seven Dash 8 C-Checks over a one-year period. Air Jamaica Express hired ExelTech for a heavy check on a single Dash 8.