Is cruising safe? Usually, but beware of what can go wrong
The cruise industry has given itself one black eye after another over the past few months — from a ship that floated adrift in a storm off Norway, to one that ran up on a dock in Venice, to the mechanical failure that left thousands of vacationers stranded in Barcelona.
Add in recurring incidents such as overboard cases and stomach illness, and it’s enough to make some people swear off cruising forever.
With cruises more connected to the internet than ever before, news of a disaster (or even a relatively minor glitch) can go viral fast. But more information doesn’t mean the floating metropolises are becoming less safe.
A study by economic consultant G.P. Wild — commissioned by the cruise industry’s trade group and released in March — makes the case that cruises are getting safer over time. Even as capacity increased 55 percent between 2009 and 2018, the report said, the number of overall “operational incidents” declined 37 percent and the rate of man-overboard cases dropped 35 percent.
Some of those incidents were industry-changing, including the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia that killed more than 30 people in 2012 and the fire that disabled the Carnival Triumph the following year. But cruise companies have adopted significant operational changes since those crises to keep the disasters from repeating.
Last year, an estimated 29.5 million people took a cruise. The G.P. Wild survey found that there were 14 significant operational incidents, 15 minor operational incidents and 23 overboard incidents — 19 of which were fatal. A “significant operational incident” is one that causes a delay of more than 24 hours, fatalities or