interCaribbean Airways

If you spot in the Caribbean, you first think of big jets from North America and Europe. But between the islands the small ones fly – and one of the most interesting of them is interCaribbean Airways. The regional airline from the Turks and Caicos Islands now connects Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic with Barbados, the Virgin Islands and Guyana. Its fleet is a feast for type collectors: ATR turboprops, Twin Otters and no fewer than three Embraer families, including the now rare EMB 120 Brasilia.

interCaribbean Airways at a glance

interCaribbean Airways is a private regional airline based in Providenciales, the main tourist island of the Turks and Caicos Islands. The British overseas territory lies southeast of the Bahamas and north of Haiti – right between the Greater Antilles and the Atlantic. For an airline that connects islands, that is an obvious starting point.

The story begins small: founder Lyndon Gardiner, who grew up on North Caicos, learned to fly in the late 1980s and built up an air taxi business. According to the airline, flight operations began in the early 1990s with a single Cessna, then under the name InterIsland Airways. The callsign “ISLANDWAYS” still comes from that origin today.

In 2003 the company renamed itself Air Turks & Caicos and started scheduled international flights to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and the Bahamas. In 2008 came the merger with the local SkyKing, and in November 2013 the current name interCaribbean Airways followed. From 2020 the network grew significantly to the south – to Barbados, Grenada, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Dominica and Guyana.

Today interCaribbean calls itself the largest regional airline in the Caribbean. Gardiner’s group of companies includes, besides the airline, a maintenance operation and an FBO for general aviation in Providenciales. interCaribbean does not belong to an alliance.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code JY: appears in the flight number, on tickets and on departures boards.
• ICAO code IWY: shows up in the air traffic control flight plan and on flight trackers.
• Callsign ISLANDWAYS: how the crew identifies itself on the radio – a legacy of InterIsland Airways.

The callsign in particular makes beginners frown because it doesn’t match the current name. That is typical for airlines with several renamings: codes and callsigns are rarely changed along with them because they are firmly anchored in systems, contracts and radio procedures.

The network: three hubs, many islands

interCaribbean doesn’t run a hub system in the style of the big network airlines, but three nodes bundle the traffic:

Hub	Code	Role in the network
Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands	PLS	Home base, domestic flights to the other islands, routes to the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola and Barbados
Bridgetown, Barbados	BGI	Central hub per the airline, connections across the eastern, southern and northern Caribbean to Guyana and Trinidad
Tortola, British Virgin Islands	EIS	Node between San Juan, St. Maarten, Antigua and Dominica

The route network stretches from Havana in the west via Nassau, Kingston, Santo Domingo, Santiago de los Caballeros and Cap-Haïtien to Barbados, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and Guyana. In 2024 and 2025, additions included Grenada–Georgetown, San Juan–Anguilla, San Juan–St. Kitts and connections from Tortola to Barbados and St. Maarten. At the end of 2025 the airline also announced new nonstop flights from Barbados to Tortola, Providenciales, St. Maarten, Ogle (Guyana) and Port of Spain.

For the island group itself, interCaribbean is a kind of lifeline: in the Turks and Caicos Islands, Twin Otters connect the main island of Providenciales with smaller islands such as Grand Turk, South Caicos and Salt Cay. The runways there are short, and the sturdy de Havilland is built for exactly that.

The fleet: ATR, Embraer and Twin Otter

The fleet is the reason interCaribbean is so appealing to spotters. According to the airline’s fleet overview (as of 2026), these types are part of it:

Type	Seats	Use per the airline	Spotter tip
Embraer E170	76	Newest and largest jet, more capacity and range	In scheduled service since August 2026, e.g. VQ-TCI
Embraer ERJ 145	50	Longer routes	In the fleet since 2019, slim fuselage with rear-mounted engines
ATR 72-500	68	Largest turboprop, connections between the big hubs	First aircraft in 2023, named “Captain H Williams”
ATR 42-500	48	Short runways, smaller island communities	Backbone of the fleet, several former TAROM aircraft
Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia	30	Smaller destinations	Rare classic, retirement announced since 2023
DHC-6 Twin Otter	19	Domestic flights within the Turks and Caicos Islands	Short-takeoff specialist with fixed landing gear

ATR 42 and ATR 72

The workhorse is the ATR 42-500. In June 2023 interCaribbean took over seven more examples from Romania’s TAROM, bringing it to ten ATRs. The ATR 42 replaces the smaller Brasilia on many routes and copes well with short island runways. In August 2023 the stretched version with 68 seats followed with the ATR 72-500, initially deployed in the southern Caribbean. Both types come from the French-Italian manufacturer ATR.

You can best see the difference between the two in the fuselage length relative to the wing: the ATR 72 looks much more stretched, the ATR 42 more stubby. You can read more in the guide Telling the ATR 42/72 and Dash 8 apart.

Three Embraer families in one fleet

interCaribbean itself emphasizes that it is the only airline in the world operating three Embraer platforms at the same time. For you as a collector that means: on a single day in Providenciales you could theoretically catch three generations of the Brazilian manufacturer Embraer.

• The EMB 120 Brasilia is a turboprop from the 1980s with a T-tail and 30 seats. interCaribbean at times flew around ten examples and even leased aircraft to Cayman Airways from 2014 to 2016. In 2023 the airline announced it would replace the Brasilias with ATR 42s. In the August 2026 announcement about the E170, however, it still counts the type as part of the fleet.
• The ERJ 145 has been in service since 2019: a narrow regional jet with two rear-mounted engines and 50 seats.
• The E170 is the newest addition. In June 2026 the airline christened the E170 VQ-TCI, and scheduled service began in August 2026. According to the airline, two E170s were in service at that time and six more were announced. The cabin has 2-2 seating with no middle seats.

At times leased Bombardier jets supplemented the fleet, such as a CRJ700 that entered service in September 2023. Such leased aircraft don’t always wear the full interCaribbean livery – one more reason to pay attention to the registration.

Twin Otter for the short runways

For domestic flights within the Turks and Caicos Islands, interCaribbean deploys the DHC-6 Twin Otter. The high-wing aircraft with fixed landing gear is a Caribbean classic that you also see at Winair on Saba or at Cayman Airways.

How to recognize interCaribbean

The airline consistently writes its name with a lowercase “i” and a capital “C”: interCaribbean. These titles on the fuselage are the surest identifier, because the fleet consists of such different types that you can’t rely on a silhouette.

A second feature are the “Spirit of …” aircraft. interCaribbean dedicates individual aircraft to countries in its network and gives them the respective coat of arms or flag on the tail and the name on the nose. Known examples include “Spirit of Grenada”, “Spirit of St. Kitts and Nevis”, “Spirit of Guyana”, “Spirit of Barbados” and “Spirit of St. Vincent and The Grenadines”. The E170 VQ-TCI is called “Spirit of Turks and Caicos Islands” and carries the islands’ coat of arms on the vertical stabilizer. For collectors these aircraft are the counterpart to special liveries – how to document them cleanly is shown in the article Collecting and documenting special liveries.

The third feature is the registration. Aircraft from the Turks and Caicos Islands carry the prefix VQ-T, as the E170 VQ-TCI shows. Because the overseas territory is British, the system feels familiar if you know British G- registrations: the overseas territories have their own prefixes but a similar logic. More about prefixes and their meaning is explained in Understanding aircraft registrations.

ATR 42, EMB 120 or ERJ 145? How to tell them apart

The three smaller types show up at the same island airports and are easily confused from a distance. Wing position is the quickest key.

The E170, by contrast, is easy to recognize: it is the largest jet in the fleet and has its engines under the wings. At most you could confuse it with other E-Jets like the E175 or E190 – how to tell those apart is shown in Telling Embraer E-Jets apart. For the ERJ 145 and its relatives, the guide Recognizing regional jets is also worth a look.

Spotting interCaribbean

Your best chances are at the three hubs. In Providenciales (PLS) interCaribbean takes off and lands alongside the big North American and British airlines that bring vacationers to the islands. The airport has a single runway 10/28 – so the runway direction in use determines which side you set up on. In Barbados (BGI) you see interCaribbean next to Caribbean Airlines and many leisure airlines from Europe, while in Tortola (EIS) small island traffic dominates.

The destination airports are also worth a look: in Nassau you meet interCaribbean alongside Bahamasair, and in the eastern Caribbean the airline flies to islands that LIAT used to serve. ATR competition in the region has thinned out: Air Antilles on the French islands ceased operations in 2026, and Silver Airways between Florida and the Bahamas already in 2025. Anyone specifically collecting Caribbean turboprops therefore can hardly avoid interCaribbean.

At small island airports the same applies as at regional airports in Europe: little traffic, short distances, but also few established spotting places. You can find tips on how to still get good pictures at such places under Spotting at small regional airports. And if you’re just starting out, Plane spotting for beginners will help.

Common mix-ups

• Confusing interCaribbean with Caribbean Airlines – Caribbean Airlines is the flag carrier of Trinidad and Tobago with Boeing 737s and ATRs; interCaribbean is a private regional airline from the Turks and Caicos Islands.
• Taking Air Turks & Caicos for a separate airline – that is just interCaribbean’s former name.
• Assigning the callsign ISLANDWAYS wrongly – it belongs to interCaribbean and dates from the days as InterIsland Airways.
• Confusing the EMB 120 and ATR 42 – the Brasilia is a low-wing aircraft, the ATR a high-wing one.
• Confusing the ERJ 145 and E170 – the ERJ 145 has rear-mounted engines, the E170 has engines under the wings.
• Assigning every VQ registration to the Turks and Caicos Islands – VQ-B stands for Bermuda; for the Turks and Caicos Islands, VQ-T applies.

Conclusion

interCaribbean Airways has grown from an air taxi with a Cessna into, by its own account, the largest regional airline in the Caribbean. For spotters it is exciting mainly because of its fleet: ATR 42 and ATR 72 as workhorses, Twin Otters for the short island runways and, with the EMB 120, ERJ 145 and E170, three Embraer families under one roof. If you’re traveling in the Caribbean, keep an eye on the JY flights – especially as long as the Brasilia is still flying.