RCI-Royal Caribbean is joining Carnival Corporation and delaying the reopening of cruise shipping operations by another month. The fleetwide suspension will last through June 11, 2020. This comes after the new no-sail order of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
On Thursday, April 15, RCCL announced its liners would resume passenger shipping on June 12. The company initially announced on March 24 it would cancel all cruises up until May 12. RCCL suspended sailings of its global fleet because of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
On April 9, the CDC issued a new “no-sail” order for cruise lines that will stay in effect for at least 100 days. The order requires all passenger shipping companies to report to CDC how they sanitize the vessels, the number of Coronavirus cases (reported daily), to conduct daily tests for COVID-19, to staff the ships with enough physicians and medical equipment, to repatriate nonessential crew, to privately medevac and ambulance critically ill people.
The CDC said the major cruise companies with US ship deployment (homeporting in the USA) had not done a sufficient job to help preventing the virus outbreak.
Carnival Corporation (world's largest cruise shipowner) extended the suspension of 3 of its brands (Seabourn, Princess and CCL-Carnival) on April 13. CCL-Carnival Cruise Line cancelled all departures through June 26, Princess and Seabourn - through June 30. The three companies had planned to resume services in May.
As of Thursday afternoon, NCL-Norwegian and MSC Cruises have not pushed back suspension dates, which are May 10 and May 29, respectively.