More than a 100 ship officers were terminated by their prime management Carnival Cruise Line (CCL), as its parent company drops 18 less efficient vessels from its fleet across numerous brands due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Tuesday, September 22, CCL spokesperson Roger Frizzell said that the cruise is also not operational in the US for about six months.
“The dismissals come from various units, represent a small percentage of ship officers, all ship officers make about 10% of Carnival’s entire workforce,” he added.
Frizzell also said other brands might also curtail their workforce in the coming days reason being the fleet reduction, though he withheld to give more specifics.
Carnival, a carnival corporation company, the largest cruise operator in the world, has decided upon holding off U.S. sailings until at least Oct. 31, a month after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s expected expiration of its cruising ban.
Costa Cruises, the company’s Italian brand, started sailing again on Sept. 6 after a months-long pause brought on by ship outbreaks. Its German brand, AIDA Cruises, is going to restart operational activities this fall.
The company in May said it was dismissing 820 shoreside workers in Florida, along with another 537 being laid off. It also temporarily dismissed about 1,000 shoreside employees in California and Washington state.
“The reductions would result in hundreds of millions of dollars in annual savings,” said the Carnival.
The corporation nearly had 7,000 shoreside workers in the U.S. and operated 105 ships around the world prior to the pandemic, Mr Frizzell said.
Carnival on average employed 92,000 shipboard employees, as well as 12,000 full-time and 2,000 part-time or seasonal employees, as per its 2019 annual securities filing.
Carnival last week noted an elemental loss of $2.9 billion for the quarter ended Aug. 31 as it burned about $770 million a month.
It anticipates burning about $530 million a month for the ongoing quarter. Those cash-burn rates fall in line with the $650 million average monthly burn rate for the second half of the year the company previously anticipated.
On Monday, a trade group for cruise operators charted sailing prerequisites to U.S. regulators, in order to show how cruise lines prepare to safeguard people on board in the middle of a pandemic, should they be allowed to restart U.S. operations.
The Cruise Lines International Association’s plan calls for implementing stricter checks to keep infected people from boarding ships, minimizing transmission through air management, also a well-laid plan for handling positive infections on board.