P&O Cruises’ ship Britannia suffered a crash on Sunday, after a storm caused it to break free of its moorings at Palma de Mallorca and collide with a freight ship.
While the ship hasn’t suffered any significant structural damage, the problems caused by the crash have meant that some guests were disembarked at the port, due to be flown home.
Some of the ship’s lifesaving equipment, and one of the lifeboats, were damaged and were unable to be repaired on the ship. As a result, 321 of the guests on the ship have been asked to leave – the ship is almost at full capacity on the cruise, and so the loss of a lifeboat becomes a risk.
It’s unclear yet on which guests were asked to leave, and if there was an opportunity for some guests to volunteer. It has been reported that it is not just guests from the affected muster station that were asked to leave.
However, the ongoing issues with Air Traffic Control have caused problems for flying guests back to the UK, and those who were disembarked are (at the time of writing) still being kept in hotels.
One couple has spoken to the BBC to complain about the quality of the hotel, and stated that they would’ve refused to leave the ship had they known the quality of the resort would be lacking.
The cruise line is reportedly offering disembarked guests a full refund of the days they have lost in their cruise, along with a 20% discount on their next P&O cruise provided they book before 30th December.
P&O has stated that future sailings on Britannia won’t be affected and the lifeboat will be repaired for the next cruise.
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We were on this cruise, but were not selected to leave.
A lot of the media said passengers were told to go to their muster stations after the incident – this was NOT true, but the CREW were told to go to their ’emergency’ positions.
People were able to say no if they had been selected to leave, or volunteer to go if they had not. Think P&O handled it well overall. I know there were issues for people stranded on shore after excursions, but it was a freak ‘act of god’. Not great for those 300+ as hotel was poor (but which hotel would have that many free rooms in August??) and they then had delayed Palma flights and possibly UK air traffic control issues to contend with.
Heard one passenger ask ‘Why can’t they send a spare ship?’ lol.