DAILY FINANCE: Another mishap on Carnival’s beleaguered Costa cruise line took place this week. An engine fire on Monday aboard the Costa Allegra left the ship powerless and stranded on the Indian Ocean. It took three days before the boat was successfully tugged to shore.
It’s worse than you probably think. Until reaching dry land on Thursday the passengers had no air conditioning, no running water, and no warm food. Many of the more than 600 passengers had no choice but to sleep on the ship’s top deck given the unbearable heat in the rooms. Food and bottled water were routinely flown in by helicopter, but having to bathe with bottled water isn’t a luxurious first-world problem.
Carnival will have a hard time keeping the Costa brand afloat after this latest event. It has plenty of other brands in its arsenal including Holland America, the Princess line that was made famous by The Love Boat, and — of course — its own namesake brand. Its Cunard, AIDA, and P&O lines are very popular overseas. However, won’t this incident be a blow to bookings across its fleet?… (more)
EDITOR: That Holland America Cruise Line is a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation came as a shock to the Watchdog who has a booking for late April! The Costa Concordia incident suggested criminal neglect on the part of Carnival that a captain would be allowed to capriciously deviate from the charted course on earlier occasions and at the time of the ‘accident.’
WIKIPEDIA: “In 1989, HAL became a wholly owned subsidiary of Carnival Corp. The company operates 15 ships to 7 continents and is expected to carry over 750,000 cruise passengers in 2012.[2]”
