Caribbean Air­lines will seek le­gal ad­vice con­cern­ing the lease agree­ment it has in place for a batch of Boe­ing 737 Max-8 planes to boost its fleet in De­cem­ber.

Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day said the air­line had been in­struct­ed to re­view its op­tions con­cern­ing the agree­ment giv­en the safe­ty con­cerns raised in the wake of the lat­est air tragedy in­volv­ing one of the planes in Ethiopia re­cent­ly.

"Caribbean Air­lines has been au­tho­rised and in­struct­ed by me to get the best ad­vice in the world with re­spect to these leas­es and al­so to put con­tin­gency arrange­ments in place with the air­craft leas­ing com­pa­nies with re­spect to al­ter­na­tive air­craft in the event that as we get clos­er to De­cem­ber, the FAA de­cides that there is a per­ma­nent prob­lem with the Max-8," Im­bert said dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, CAL once again clar­i­fied it did not cur­rent­ly have any Boe­ing 737 Max-8s and would not in­tro­duce the plane to its fleet if it did not meet in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards. CAL had planned to add the Max-8s to its fleet through a lease in De­cem­ber.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty is­sued a pro­hi­bi­tion or­der to all op­er­a­tors of Boe­ing 737 Max 8 & 9 air­craft on Wednes­day, hours af­ter the Unit­ed States of­fi­cial­ly ground­ed those air­craft af­ter sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries took sim­i­lar ac­tion.

The ground­ing of the planes glob­al­ly led to scores of pas­sen­gers be­ing strand­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Wednes­day, as Amer­i­can Air­line flights to Mi­a­mi were can­celled. AA used the Max-8 plane to ser­vice that route. Two of the air­line's three dai­ly flights were again can­celled yes­ter­day as a re­sult of the Max-8 ground­ing.

Among the per­sons af­fect­ed by the can­cel­la­tion of the flights was Trinidad and To­ba­go sprint­er Khal­i­fa St Fort, who was due to re­turn to Flori­da yes­ter­day morn­ing.

"I planned to be back in time for school and train­ing to­day (yes­ter­day) but my flight was can­celled and re­booked for Fri­day (to­day) morn­ing. I missed school and I will miss train­ing to­day (yes­ter­day) but it’s okay, they are just fo­cus­ing on safe­ty," St Fort told Guardian Me­dia.

While many pas­sen­gers who were turned back at the de­par­ture gate on Wednes­day ex­pressed frus­tra­tion at the lack of in­for­ma­tion ini­tial­ly avail­able from AA, St Fort said the air­line up­dat­ed her about the sit­u­a­tion prompt­ly.

"They were very in­for­ma­tive. They let me know that my flight (was) can­celled via email at 5.30 pm (Wednes­day), which gave me ad­e­quate time to make arrange­ments. They al­so sent the next avail­able flight as soon as it was avail­able," she said.

The air­line's 3.25 pm flight to Mi­a­mi was able to go ahead as sched­uled, as the Air­line used a 737-800 to con­duct the trip.

"Clear­ly, they val­ue the Trinidad busi­ness and the Trinidad leg of their flight op­er­a­tions, they very quick­ly sub­sti­tut­ed an air­craft. They're now us­ing the same air­craft that Caribbean Air­lines us­es," Im­bert at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net brief­ing.

Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port al­so said the air­line gave the as­sur­ance that they would be back to reg­u­lar ser­vice by the week­end.

"Amer­i­can Air­lines have con­firmed to us this morn­ing that they are go­ing to op­er­ate two flights to­day (yes­ter­day) and to­mor­row (to­day) and their ser­vice should come back to nor­mal by Sun­day," said Sinanan, who said per­sons af­fect­ed by the ground­ed flights on Wednes­day were al­so ac­com­mo­dat­ed by Caribbean Air­lines and Jet­blue.