Jinxed Aurora limps back after world cruise is cancelled
The ill-fated luxury cruise liner Aurora has arrived back in Southampton after her much-delayed world cruise was cancelled .
The £200m (€288.5m) ship docked just before midnight. Hundreds of disappointed passengers are due to disembark at 8.30am today.
Running tests had shown that repairs on the ship’s propulsion system were not enough to allow the 103-night cruise to go ahead.
The final let-down for the put-upon passengers, who paid between £9,800 (€14,100) and £41,985 (€60,500) for their cruise, came after the German-built vessel finally set-sail on Wednesday night.
This was 10 days after its scheduled departure date, which had repeatedly been put back because of engine troubles.
Finally, after the ship had travelled just 110 miles, operators P&O Cruises aborted the world cruise.
While passengers will now get refunds, plus money-off deals for future cruises, the ship will be repaired at either a UK or German shipyard. It will be out of service for up to five weeks.
It is reckoned that the total cost of the cancelled cruise could be as much as £30m (€43.3m), although P&O’s parent company Carnival said that figure was likely to be nearer £20m (€28.8m) in terms of the impact on its full-year earnings.
With the ship only able to go around the Isle of Wight on short trips while repairs were carried out, 385 of the original 1,752 passengers had abandoned ship by the time she sailed on Wednesday night.
P&O Cruises said that overnight tests showed that the vessel could not achieve the required speed to complete the Grand Voyage.
The company said: “P&O Cruises apologises for the disappointment this has caused passengers, and offers its assurance that everything possible was done to get Aurora’s Grand Voyage under way before this difficult but unavoidable decision was taken.
“Passengers will be refunded their full fare, together with compensation of 25% of the amount paid for their holiday to be used as a future cruise credit on a cruise holiday booked before the end of January 2007.
P&O Cruises managing director David Dingle said it was the right decision not to have postponed the Grand Voyage earlier.
“In hindsight, it’s easy to suggest that, but the passengers on board are among our most regular and loyal passengers,” he said.
“They very much wanted this cruise to proceed, they have been incredibly loyal over the last few days and we think we owed it to them to have one last shot.”
Mr Dingle said that in his 26 years with the company he had never had a problem of this kind.
He said occasionally things did go wrong with cruise ships, but he still had the utmost confidence in the Aurora, which he described as a very successful cruise ship.
Before the cancelling the cruise, P&O brought in a number of entertainers including comedians Jimmy Tarbuck, Paul Daniels and Tom O’Connor, and singer Elaine Paige, to console the long-suffering passengers.
The cruise’s itinerary had been changed as a result of the delays, with some of the 40 stops missed out and the ship coming home via the Suez Canal and not the Panama Canal.
Acapulco, Barbados, Honolulu and San Francisco were among some of the 16 ports that were being missed out.
This is just one of a number of misfortunes to beset the Aurora.
The ship entered service in 2000 after being launched by the Princess Royal. As she blessed the vessel, the traditional champagne bottle did not break, which was considered a bad omen.
Ill fortune quickly followed when the liner broke down in the Bay of Biscay on her maiden voyage and had to proceed slowly back into Southampton. Passengers were given a free cruise and the compensation bill topped £6m (€8.7m).
In October 2003, the liner was dubbed the “plague ship” after an outbreak of the contagious norovirus on board laid 600 passengers and crew low.
