The HAL crews?

[BobbiSox]

There has been a lot of speculation regarding the passengers' return to the ships, but not much  mentioned about the crews. I wonder how the virus will effect the line's hiring practices. Will there be enough employees qualified for the new standards, whatever they may be? 

[JimnKaren]

I think that I would not want to be in the home office trying to decide things like this. Also, with 4 ships gone will there be an extra number of potential crew members? Or...might all those people have moved on to something else? And, then there is the issue of getting all those folks from point A to point B (wherever that might be and whenever that might be).

Jim

[BobbiSox]

15 minutes ago, JimnKaren said:

I think that I would not want to be in the home office trying to decide things like this. Also, with 4 ships gone will there be an extra number of potential crew members? Or...might all those people have moved on to something else? And, then there is the issue of getting all those folks from point A to point B (wherever that might be and whenever that might be).

Jim

It does boggle the mind, doesn't it? 

[Sir PMP]

2 hours ago, BobbiSox said:

There has been a lot of speculation regarding the passengers' return to the ships, but not much  mentioned about the crews. I wonder how the virus will effect the line's hiring practices. Will there be enough employees qualified for the new standards, whatever they may be? 

I am pretty sure that they are going through some hard times also..

[CruiserBruce]

The obvious solution to the "qualified to the current standards" issue for employees is training, and the CDC requires much training. And so the frequent comment here about what it will require to put ships back in service will include time for training.

 

The CDC requires "test cruises" to measure the success of training, as well as other new activities.

[rkacruiser]

I think about crew members whom I have met over the years and now really, really regret that I didn't get contact information from those whom I have met, particularly more than once, and enjoyed their service.  How have their families and them been in this most odd of years?  

[mcrcruiser]

Getting crew  trained  & or even  being able to get a sufficient number of crew is daunting imo 

[Himself]

This was supposed to be a four week pause.  If HAL starts up in March it will over a year since they have sailed. 

[Hlitner]

If you look at the Cruise News blog, Richard Fein (CEO of RCI) talked about requiring all crew members to be vaccinated and said they were still considering what to do about passengers.  Frank del Rio (NCL Holdings) had similar remarks.

 

Hank

[KirkNC]

22 hours ago, rkacruiser said:

I think about crew members whom I have met over the years and now really, really regret that I didn't get contact information from those whom I have met, particularly more than once, and enjoyed their service.  How have their families and them been in this most odd of years?  

We stay in touch with 4 or 5 via Facebook and they are doing surprisingly well.  Their attitude is always so good.  And remember some live in the areas that were hard hit by a typhoon.

[ontheweb]

16 hours ago, Hlitner said:

If you look at the Cruise News blog, Richard Fein (CEO of RCI) talked about requiring all crew members to be vaccinated and said they were still considering what to do about passengers.  Frank del Rio (NCL Holdings) had similar remarks.

 

Hank

Here is the article that Hank is referring to:

 

Cruise Executives: Vaccines Are Game Changers For Industry (cruisecritic.com)

[Randyk47]

19 hours ago, Hlitner said:

If you look at the Cruise News blog, Richard Fein (CEO of RCI) talked about requiring all crew members to be vaccinated and said they were still considering what to do about passengers.  Frank del Rio (NCL Holdings) had similar remarks.

 

Hank

I wonder how that translates into getting cruises started up again?   I understand there are more vaccines being developed and tested so that might be increased supply eventually but how many months before that happens?   Unless the cruise lines buy their way into the supply chain in the near future I would think it would be nearly impossible to vaccinate enough crew and staff to man more than just a few ships before late spring or even later.    

[Hlitner]

40 minutes ago, Randyk47 said:

I wonder how that translates into getting cruises started up again?   I understand there are more vaccines being developed and tested so that might be increased supply eventually but how many months before that happens?   Unless the cruise lines buy their way into the supply chain in the near future I would think it would be nearly impossible to vaccinate enough crew and staff to man more than just a few ships before late spring or even later.    

I think your estimate of late spring (or even early summer) is probably about right.  But I suspect that the cruise lines are not going to get much going before that..anyway.  In the USA they still need to satisfy the CDC to get their authorization and that may not be as easy as some think.  There is also the issue of finding ports that will even allow a ship to visit.  Much of the Caribbean remains closed to cruise ships and may not want to reopen until there are lots of vaccinated folks.  Most islands do not have sufficient healthcare facilities to deal with major COVID outbreaks that might result from cruise ship visits.  If Canada does not open up some of their West Coast ports there will likely be no Alaskan cruise season.

 

I do think we will see some limited 7 day or less cruises (Carnival and RCI) by March.  But those cruises will really be like rolling the dice and with all the restrictions they will need onboard one might question whether it would even be like a cruise.  You may see many younger folks opting to fly to an all-inclusive as an alternative to a cruise.  DW and I would normally be booking some kind of long cruise in the Spring (at least 3 weeks) but we have now ruled that out.  Even if there were such cruises the restrictions onboard and in ports would be a complete turn off.  We will simply bide our time and see what places open-up in the Spring.  If Europe opens up to tourism we would likely fly to Europe, rent/lease a car for a few weeks, and have fun.   We were supposed to be in Asia in April-May but that is not going to happen in 2021 due to COVID.  We are very independent travelers and are comfortable being flexible as well as doing last minute trips.  As much as we love to cruise we just do not see that in our future until the Fall of 2021 at the earliest (we have bookings in Oct and Dec).

 

Hank

[drowelf]

3 hours ago, Hlitner said:

  If Europe opens up to tourism we would likely fly to Europe, rent/lease a car for a few weeks, and have fun.   We were supposed to be in Asia in April-May but that is not going to happen in 2021 due to COVID.  We are very independent travelers and are comfortable being flexible as well as doing last minute trips.  As much as we love to cruise we just do not see that in our future until the Fall of 2021 at the earliest (we have bookings in Oct and Dec).

 

Hank

Thats we are looking at for this year. We cancelled our 28 day March Asia and had an August cruise cancelled under us for 2021. So we too are looking at land Europe (Car/Train) for late 3rd Quarter 2021. All that will depend on us getting vaccinated and there being wide spread vaccination in Europe. 

[Hlitner]

2 hours ago, drowelf said:

Thats we are looking at for this year. We cancelled our 28 day March Asia and had an August cruise cancelled under us for 2021. So we too are looking at land Europe (Car/Train) for late 3rd Quarter 2021. All that will depend on us getting vaccinated and there being wide spread vaccination in Europe. 

Guess we are thinking a lot alike :).  I think we will be able to get vaccinated by May or June.  But some of the reports coming out of Europe are that they may be looking at late third quarter until they can vaccinate much of the European general public.  If it takes them that long it will likely destroy their entire Spring/Summer tourist season for the 2nd year in a row :(.   In that case our backup plan would be to do a major driving trip here in the USA.

 

Hank