Last Friday afternoon, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) enacted an order which requires all travelers to wear masks on public transportation in order to help control the COVID-19 pandemic. The CDC defined travelers to include all “passengers and crew.” The order applies to travel by bus, train, plane, vessel and other conveyances, as well as at “transportation hubs” which are defined as airports, seaports, train stations and bus terminals. As promised during…

Yesterday, an image which Celebrity Cruises tweeted jumped out at me, so to speak. It was a photo (below) of a cruise line bartender pouring cocktails to two young women sitting close together at one of the bars on a Celebrity cruise ship. No one is wearing a mask, neither the crew nor the guests, and no social distancing was maintained in the closed interior space. Congregating in a bar with no masks worn by…

Several news outlets in Italy report that a young Italian officer working on an AIDA cruise ship has not been accounted for after his family reported him missing. ShipMag reports that Alessio Gaspari, age 25, was employed by AIDA Cruises as a third deck mate serving on an AIDA ship. His family reported him missing after he failed to return home. ALtv (abruzzolive.tv) states that an unidentified AIDA cruise ship, was positioned in…

A number of Carnival Corporation cruise executives sold over 125,000 shares of CCL stock last week, according to forms filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). According to SEC forms, CEO Donald (left) sold 62,639 Carnival shares on January 14th for $1,300,000, at an average per price of $21.12 per share. The forms also indicate that Chief Financial Officer David Bernstein (right) sold 49,031 Carnival shares for a total of $1 million, at…

AIDA cruise ships, including the AIDAmar and the AIDAperla, are suffering what has been described as an “immense” IT problem, according to a German newspaper  published today. Bild reports that the AIDA cruise line’s operations in its home port of Rostock, Germany have been affected by the failure of the company’s land based and shipboard telephone, computer and internet systems. Eye witnesses interviewed by the German newspaper state that “there was no internet connection from…

Senator Richard Blumenthal recently proposed legislation to strengthen cruise ship safety. According to a press release from the senator’s office, the bill includes proposals designed to expand health and safety on cruise ships: “The bill includes language from Blumenthal’s Cruise Passenger Protection Act to strengthen a number of critical medical standards aboard cruise ships, including ensuring the presence of a physician to treat any passenger in the event of an emergency, the appropriate number of…