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Canadian maintenance provider Aveos Fleet Performance has ceased operations and filed for bankruptcy protection today.

The Montreal-based company will stop its airframe heavy maintenance business to concentrate solely on component and engine support in the future, a spokesman for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) tells Flightglobal Pro.

The union represents 1,300 employees in the company's respective facilities.

The airframe maintenance staff have been permanently laid off, he adds. He could not specify how many employees were affected.

The company remains shut today as it files for bankruptcy protection. But the engine and component repair shops are to open again in the next few days.

Aveos employs around 4,700 employees in total, comprising 3,300 staff members in Canada and 1,400 at its narrowbody airframe maintenance subsidiary Aeroman in El Salvador. It is not clear yet how Aeroman will be affected.

Aveos' main customer is its former parent carrier Air Canada, which divested its technical arm, then called Air Canada Technical Services (ACTS), in 2007.

The IAMAW spokesman says that Air Canada's work volumes have reduced, because the airline had extended maintenance intervals.

Air Canada conducts its line maintenance in-house but has employed Aveos for heavy airframe, engine and component support.

The airline says it will make "arrangements with a number of other service providers, located primarily in the United States and Canada", for work which Aveos will not be able to offer in the future.

Aveos could not be immediately reached for comment.