MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. - An aircraft company that promised to bring nearly 300 jobs to the Grand Strand after it located to Myrtle Beach International Airport in 2003 has not met its first-year job creation requirements.

AvCraft Aviation was required to create 80 jobs by Jan. 15 to receive its first grant from a four-year $750,000 incentive package, airport director Bob Kemp said. The company had 65 employees on Wednesday.

Company officials said the county deadline is incorrect. The company is still on track for job growth because it did not start creating jobs until June 2004, AvCraft manager Marvin Euchner said. Until then, the company was renovating hangars at the airport, Euchner said.

The incentives are supposed to cover the cost of the hangar work, but Kemp said the reimbursement will be incremental if the company does not reach the employment goal.

The company has spent at least $187,500 on hangar improvements, Kemp said.

The Leesburg, Va.-based company moved to Myrtle Beach from Tyler, Texas, in December 2003, promising to create 280 jobs in five years at a news conference attended by Gov. Mark Sanford.

AvCraft stores and maintains about 45 of its Dornier 328 airplanes at the Myrtle Beach airport, usually when the planes are between leases to an airline.

Industry analysts say the commercial market is shrinking for the 30-seat regional planes. Few airlines in the United States still fly them.

"They are very nice airplanes, but you can't make money with them," said Mike Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, a national consulting firm to the airline industry. Boyd said a changing economy has left a glut of short-distance passenger aircraft in the United States.

Many of the company's planes are used by international carriers. The largest user of the Dornier 328 is the Chinese airline Hainan, according to AvCraft.

International customers are unlikely to continue supporting an airline maintenance and storage facility in Myrtle Beach, said Doug Kelly, vice president of asset evaluation for Avitas Inc., an aeronautics company.

"Anybody in Asia is not going to want to go to South Carolina to have their maintenance done," Kelly said. "The ones in Europe are not likely to go to South Carolina."