Jewel 3/20 Sailing Cancelled, POA Sailings Through 4/2 Sailing Cancelled

[timf2001]

22 hours ago, Middleager said:

What's the reason the first sailing back should start on the Atlantic side of the canal?

 

We were booked on the March 20's cruise from Panama to the Caribbeans (wanted to go diving in the ABC islands)  and b2b on the March 29 from Colon to San Diego.  Now the 3/20 is cancelled, we're not sure if we still want to do the 3/29 which involves buying flights ourselves, and getting from Panama city to Colon.   NCL may still cancel the 3/29 cruise.

Norwegian Jewel is currently in Marseille, France and ultimately needs to get to the west coast in time for the Alaska cruise season.  It makes the most sense to only do a single Panama Canal transit to get in position for summer.  Since 3/20 was scheduled to depart from the Pacific side of the canal, it would have had to reposition empty through the canal in order to be in position to do the transit back through the canal as scheduled on 3/21.  Transiting the canal is expensive and congested, and without paying passengers doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

The 3/29 is probably safe since it departs from Colon and the ship has to do the canal transit at least once anyway.  There's always a chance that port restrictions or COVID cases could force them to reposition directly to the west coast without passengers, but I think they'll make every attempt possible to generate revenue from the necessary canal transit.

[Middleager]

15 hours ago, timf2001 said:

Norwegian Jewel is currently in Marseille, France and ultimately needs to get to the west coast in time for the Alaska cruise season.  It makes the most sense to only do a single Panama Canal transit to get in position for summer.  Since 3/20 was scheduled to depart from the Pacific side of the canal, it would have had to reposition empty through the canal in order to be in position to do the transit back through the canal as scheduled on 3/21.  Transiting the canal is expensive and congested, and without paying passengers doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

The 3/29 is probably safe since it departs from Colon and the ship has to do the canal transit at least once anyway.  There's always a chance that port restrictions or COVID cases could force them to reposition directly to the west coast without passengers, but I think they'll make every attempt possible to generate revenue from the necessary canal transit.

What you described makes sense (high Panama canal transit fee).  But NCL must have taken that into account when they first schedule the March 20 sailing. 

 

--

We still didn't receive any official notification from NCL re: 3/20 cancellation.  We only got the notification from our TA.  In our NCL account,  3/20 sailing is still showing normal.  So NCL is really slow this time.

 

Final payment for the Jewel 3/29 sailing is in a few days.  We're still figuering out if we'll go (need to buy flight yyz-pty, transfer to Colon...)

[julig22]

28 minutes ago, Middleager said:

We still didn't receive any official notification from NCL re: 3/20 cancellation.  We only got the notification from our TA.  In our NCL account,  3/20 sailing is still showing normal.  So NCL is really slow this time.

In my experience, emails from NCL seem to be hit or miss when you book through a TA.