MSC pull out all the stops after engine failure on the Opera…….
No doubt you will have seen the news reports regarding the Opera and the engine failure, or explosion, that occured on Saturday in Baltic waters. This is not a unique event. Unfortunately things do sometimes go wrong on cruise ships, and it isn’t just MSC.
News reports are full of horror stories about air conditioning not working and poor or no sanitation whilst passengers were marooned at sea, but we all know how the press love to embellish their stories, so I would take most of these reports with a pinch of salt.
MSC have just issued the follwoing statement to clarify the situation:
Following the technical problems to an electrical panel experienced on May 14th, MSC Opera has been towed to the port of Nynamshamn (close to, Sweden) where she arrived this morning around 11 am.
Since yesterday afternoon, most of the services have been restored and this morning passengers have been offered a hot breakfast. All ship’s bars were open with a complimentary beverage service. The whole crew, together with a team of technicians from STX Yards have been working around the clock to solve the electrical problem and an additional technical team has just embarked in the port of Nynamshamn.
MSC Cruises’ team ashore is working closely with the port of Nynamshamn and the port of Stockholm to welcome and repatriate all guests from Stockholm. MSC Cruises is issuing all passengers with a credit voucher for the whole amount of the 10-day cruise valid until December 2012.
As the work of the electrical team is not yet over, MSC Cruises has taken the precautionary measure of cancelling the next MSC Opera cruise which was due to sail out of Southampton tomorrow May 17th, in order to maintain its high standard of security, quality and comfort. All affected passengers will be contacted and offered compensation.
As I would expect, MSC are doing all they can to compensate passengers for this unfortunate stroke of luck and I’m sure that the Opera will be up and running again in no time.
I was due to go down to Southampton tomorrow for lunch on board the Poesia but this has now been cancelled as the cruise line concentrate all their efforts on the Opera and her repairs. Ho hum! I was looking forward to that as I have only been on the Fantasia to date but I’m sure we will have another opportunity later in the year.
One Comment on “MSC pull out all the stops after engine failure on the Opera…….”
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It’s not just the press who embellish – MSC’s account is unrecognisable to my parents who were passengers on that ship. Why decide to try to limp the ship back to Southampton when it first broke down rather than making arrangements to go to the closest port? Not all passengers were offered hot breakfasts on Monday 16th; the free drinks were limited to water or wine – nothing else, no fruit juice or anything; cabins were freezing cold and dark with no emeregency lighting or even torches on hand to help; the staff were not willing to help thoose with mobility problems to get from decks their cabins were on to those where the limited food, drink and entertainment was happening; passengers were taken to the airport and just left – no information on which flights they would be on, where they needed to go to check in, no-one to help or direct them; many were taken to the airport too late for the flights they had been allocated (not that they knew this until they were effectively left behind in the airport!). There were no facilities open in the airport to obtain drinks, not even water; the British Consulate arrived to provide this once some passengers contacted them as there was no-one from MSC to help. MSC were not answering their emergency line nor returning calls on this line. These things do happen and everyone realises that it is just unlucky, one of those things but it is how a company deals with these circumstances when they happen that is the measure of how much they actually care about their customers – it seems that a lack of organisation within MSC at all levels has made a bad situation much worse than it should have been.