NCL Holdings president and CEO Frank Dek Rio rang the bell this morning at the New York Stock Exchange in celebration of the five year anniversary of NCL’s listing. Del Rio was later interviewed by CNBC when he was asked about cyclone Grayson, often called the “bomb cyclone” storm, which terrorized the passengers aboard the Norwegian Breakaway as it sailed into the storm while heading back to New York last week.

Smiling, CEO Del Rio stated this morning (video link here) to a national television audience:

NCL Cruise CEO Frank Del Rio  . . . weather can be unpredictable . . . and that’s what happened this weekend . . . the great news is our ship is back in the Caribbean carrying 4,000 happy cruisers . . . so . . . all good. 

Meterologists all agree that the storm was perfectly forecasted well in advance. Many of the traumatized passengers on the Breakaway felt that NCL’s priority was to get back to port in New York to pick up new passengers so NCL would not lose any money. (You can read about NCL recklessly sailing into the storm in this article by Mashable).

Del Rio’s insensitive, flippant comments are typical for this greedy cruise CEO, who made $31,900,000 in 2015 alone.  Last year, he told the audience at last year’s Seatrade Global conference that he loved fewer regulations under President Trump because “they make us money.” In 2005, he defended NCL’s increase in gratuities by saying “every dollar increase in yield translates to approximately $15 million to the bottom line.” And in 2005 at the Miami Cruise Shipping trade show, he told the audience that “Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon could be more lucrative than Cuba.” (I couldn’t help tweeting at the time “have you heard of ISIS?”) The next day, fanatics targeted cruise-ship passengers who sailed into the Capital of Tunisa, slaughtering and injuring 38 passengers.

I posted Del Rio’s interview on our Cruise Law News Facebook page, and quickly received the following comments:

  • Weather in the 21st Century is not ALL that “unpredictable.” Responsible Officers have to get up to date conditions and forecasts and make responsible decisions based upon that information. That “responsible decision ” would NOT have been to sail through the conditions the Master took that ship through. “Responsible Corporate Management would not have embarked passengers or planned port calls with passengers embarked, for Mid Winter cruises from Northern latitude Atlantic ports such as New York in this season. Greed can be the ONLY reason for such actions.
  • Clearly, he is totally out of touch and lying through his teeth. The weather had been predicted days prior.
  • Admit nothing deny everything. What a putz.
  • Fat Cat personified.
  • That ship should have cancelled the cruise with the advance weather report they had.

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Photos/Videos: CNBC.

Opening Bell, January 11, 2018 from CNBC.