July 2015

Costa FortunaA Norwegian television station is reporting that a woman went overboard today from what is described as an "Italian cruise ship" near Flåm, Norway.  The woman was critically injured.

TV 2 Nyhetene reports that the woman is 40 years of age and she went overboard after a violent episode with another person on the cruise ship.

WNEM reports that Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut joined the family of George Smith to plead for a federal law to protect cruise passengers.

Senator Blumenthal and Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts have introduced the Cruise Passenger Protection Act of 2015. WNEM says that the new law will:

  • Require vessels to integrate technology that can be

A cruise passenger has reportedly gone overboard from the Holland America Line (HAL) Statendam cruise ship in the last 24 hours. 

When the Statendam arrived in Seattle this morning around 5:00 A.M. at the end of its 14 day Alaskan cruise, the passenger was not accounted for by the crew staff. 

The cruise line notified

Celebrity Cruises announced with great fanfare today that it appointed Kate McCue as the master of the Celebrity Summit cruise ship. She reportedly will be the first U.S. woman to captain a large cruise ship when she joins the Summit next month.

McCue has been with sister brand Royal Caribbean for 15 years.  

Royal

The Miami Herald’s article today (by Hannah Sampson) regarding what is described as the "behemoths at sea" raises a basic question – how can you safely evacuate 5,000 passengers and 2,000 crew members from one of these "super-size" cruise ships?

The answer is simple, you can’t. 

Maritime regulations require the task to be completed in

MSC and Costa sailed their guests into danger in March when terrorists slaughtered cruise tourists as they exited into the Tunis museum excursion site from cruise buses transporting them from the port. The cruise lines neither provided nor arranged security for their customers or, for that matter, announced even a single warning of the risks

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released its preliminary factual report finding, as anticipated, that visibility was limited when the excursion flightseeing plane operated by Promech crashed in Alaska.

The  NTSB described that the pilot was operating under visual flight rules during “marginal visual meteorological conditions.” 

You can read one of our prior articles on

I didn’t trust Carnival for a second that it really wanted to build a sustainable business relationship with the Dominican Republic through its "voluntourism" brand, "fathom" (not capitalized). I expressed my doubts here.

Hiring pseudo-sustainability expert and faux-celebrity Tara Russell to market the brand seemed as un-authentic as the "workers" who posed in the new

The United States Coast Guard is reporting that it last night it medevaced a 77 year old female cruise ship passenger suffering from a stroke approximately 200 miles east of Wilmington, North Carolina.

The ill woman was on the Carnival Pride. 

The Coast Guard air crew arrived on the scene at at sea on scene

MaasdamCruise ships losing power or propulsion have been a dime a dozen in recent years.  

But two major cruise ships losing propulsion and being stranded in an U.S. port seems just a tad unusual. That seems to be the situation with the Holland America Line’s Maasdam and the Celebrity Summit cruise ships this weekend.

Several NCL crew members reported to me that a crew member aboard the Norwegian Sun went overboard early yesterday morning while the Sun was proceeding to Juneau, Alaska.

The crew member reportedly went overboard before the cruise ship reached Juneau. 

The crew members was not rescued and his body was not located. 

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