Scores of pas­sen­gers seek­ing to leave the coun­try for busi­ness, va­ca­tion and oth­er rea­sons have been af­fect­ed by an ap­par­ent sick­out by Caribbean Air­lines pi­lots, which has re­sult­ed in all its flights for to­day be­ing ground­ed.

In a re­lease, the com­pa­ny said all of its in­ter­na­tion­al and do­mes­tic flights sched­uled for to­day would be af­fect­ed, as many of its pi­lots who were ros­tered to op­er­ate flights had called in sick.

The Guardian un­der­stands some 24 pi­lots called in sick yes­ter­day.

De­spite the sick­out, the air­line said it would do every­thing to min­imise de­lays.

CAL asked all pas­sen­gers to con­firm their flight times with the Flight Sta­tus Tool on the Web site at www.caribbean-air­lines.com be­fore ar­riv­ing at the air­port to avoid any po­ten­tial fur­ther in­con­ve­nience.

In an in­ter­nal re­lease to all staff, CEO Michael DiLol­lo said the com­pa­ny was "nat­u­ral­ly con­cerned first­ly for the health and wel­fare" of its pi­lot body, since this was an un­prece­dent­ed oc­cur­rence.

"This un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion has dis­rupt­ed our sched­uled ser­vices at the be­gin­ning of our crit­i­cal sum­mer sea­son, dur­ing which we count most on our op­er­a­tional crews to demon­strate re­li­a­bil­i­ty and ser­vice for our loy­al cus­tomers."

DiLol­lo al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the po­ten­tial neg­a­tive im­pact of the dis­rup­tions to pas­sen­gers who had com­mit­ted hard-earned sav­ings to en­joy­ing this time to­geth­er.

"To dis­ap­point them will sure­ly be a se­ri­ous breach of our un­spo­ken con­tract with them, a be­tray­al far deep­er than even our le­gal com­mit­ment to pro­vide the promised ser­vice."

The re­lease said while the man­age­ment and the pi­lots' recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union, the T&T Pi­lots As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA), have been in com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Caribbean Air­lines was dis­ap­point­ed by the ac­tion of the pi­lots.

"Caribbean Air­lines will con­tin­ue to urge fur­ther open and frank dis­cus­sion in good faith with TTAL­PA while ex­plor­ing all op­tions avail­able," it said.