The Department of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines announced that 879 Filipino crew members from the cruise ship Norwegian Joy arrived in Manila. According to DFA press release the first batch of 586 Filipino seafarers arrived from Aruba on 06 March, at the NAIA Terminal 1. Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings arranged two chartered flights for the first repatriation group - Wamos and a TUI flight from Aruba. The second batch arrived on Monday, 08 March said DFA Undersecretary Sarah Lou Y.

The long journey back home for the NCLH crew who were scheduled to be repatriated on Norwegian Joy is canceled. Instead, the company decided to repatriate the non-essential crew using charter flights. The latest update was announced via the ship's PA system informing the crew that the company arranged flights from Aruba which are scheduled for 4th and 6th of March. There are 1053 crew members onboard Norwegian Joy who will be sent via charter flights to the Philippines and Indonesia.

The cruise ship Norwegian Joy is slowly getting ready to return non-essential crew back home after NCLH announced further cancelations of cruises through April 30, 2021.

With the release of the vaccine for COVID for essential workers such as medical professionals and positive thus far response from people who have taken both doses of the vaccine, the cruise industry is starting to review options related to how they can implement policies related to vaccination in order to be able to return the crew to work and the guests to enjoy cruises. However, the views of each cruise line appear to be different, at least for now.

Norwegian Cruise Line will return all crew members that joined recently and isn't part of the skeleton crew back home. The difficult decision was announced in a meeting yesterday and the crew on board received a letter with all the details regarding the latest repatriation process. 

The global cruise company Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. which operates the Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises, announced today an extension of its previous suspension of global cruises. Suspension of global voyages on all three brands now includes all sailings with embarkation dates through April 30, 2021

The leading fintech company providing payment services for seafarers on the world's major cruise lines announced a new 3D face recognition feature called “FaceCheck”. Adding extra security to the crew members accounts Brightwell says the new feature will bring an additional layer of assurance and fraud prevention to the accounts.

Several people have informed Crew Center that the cruise ship Norwegian Escape struck a pier in the port of Civitavecchia. According to our source, the allision happened on December 17, when the Norwegian Escape was maneuvering toward a dock when it made contact with the pier. The reasons for the accident and how the vessel deviated from its course are still unknown. Fortunately, there are no injured crew members and the damage to the ship’s hull was relatively minor. 

MANILA (Jan 4, 2021) - In a press release the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) capped its repatriation efforts in 2020 by bringing home 327,511 overseas Filipinos workers, coming from at least 90 countries around the world. The DFA said that 29.3 percent of the overseas Filipinos workers, or 95,974 in total, are seafarers from more than 150 cruise ships, oil tankers, and other bulk vessels.

After announcing the latest round of cruise cancelations, now extending through February 2021, Norwegian Cruise Line is considering the possibility of starting cruise operations in Europe before sailing from US ports.