STRUGGLING CARNIVAL IS SELLING 18 CRUISE SHIPS

Carnival Corp. — the parent company of nine cruise brands, including Princess, Costa, and Carnival — announced in a third-quarter earnings filing that it plans to sell 18 cruise ships in 2020, which amounts to 17% of the company’s ships.

The move comes amid a halt in cruising since March, when the lines stopped sailing the day before a no-sail order went into effect in the United States.

Carnival Corp. has already sold eight older-model cruise ships. It has not disclosed which cruise lines the ships are from or to whom they are being sold. The company also will delay delivery of new scheduled for 2021 as a cost-saving measure.

“We are in the process of removing 18 ships from our global fleet with several ships already removed,” said Carnival’s chief communications officer, Roger Frizzell. “Given our pause in cruising, we recently moved up the timetable to remove our older, less efficient ships from our fleet. We have already sold several ships and we [are] currently in negotiations on others.”

Carnival Corp. lines account for 45% of the world’s cruise industry, according to the travel-focused site The Points Guy. Fifty-five passengers died of covid-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, on Carnival-operated ships during the early days of the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ships that are retired from cruising typically get sold to other lines, according to website Cruise Critic — or they can be sent to junkyards for scrapping.