Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises cancel cruises into April, May

Princess Cruises has announced it will cancel all cruises from U.S. ports through May 14 — more than a year after the industry came to a standstill in the middle of March last year. 

Princess itself was impacted by the pandemic early on: two of its ships, the Diamond Princess and the Grand Princess, were among the first vessels to quarantine passengers because of coronavirus infections.

Previously, Princess Cruises had canceled all itineraries through March 31. The additional cancellations come as the cruise line works on restart plans that will meet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Framework For Conditional Sailing” announced in October.

The further suspension also applies to European cruises scheduled prior to  May 15, Negin Kamali, spokesperson for Princess Cruises, told USA TODAY.

Carnival Cruise Line also announced an extension to its sailing suspension, canceling cruises scheduled through March 31 in U.S. waters.

Carnival also canceled select domestic itineraries into fall and one international cruise internationally in June, according to a statement provided by spokesperson Vance Gulliksen. 

While many of the schedule changes are in relation to pandemic-induced regulations, including voyage-length restrictions, some are also related to rescheduled dry-dock work.

The cancellations include: 

• All sailings from U.S. ports through March 31.
• Carnival Freedom’s April 10 sailing from Galveston.
• Carnival Miracle’s sailings from San Diego and San Francisco through Sept. 16.
• Carnival Liberty’s sailings from Port Canaveral from Sept. 17 through Oct. 18.
• Carnival Sunshine’s sailings from Charleston from Oct. 11 through Nov. 13.
• Carnival Spirit’s 15-day voyage from Singapore to Brisbane set to depart June 12.

“We are sorry to disappoint our guests, as we can see from our booking activity that there is clearly a pent-up demand for cruising on Carnival,” Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line, said in the statement. 

Duffy added that the cruise line plans to resume operations in 2021 with a “phased-in approach,” a strategy the cruise line’s parent company, Carnival Corp., has referenced frequently since the onset of the pandemic. 

The cancellations come as the U.S. is seeing a continued upward trend in COVID-19 cases, reaching 21 million cases on Tuesday night, just over four days since reporting 20 million cases, Johns Hopkins data shows. And Georgia became the fifth state to report a case of the more contagious virus strain first identified in the United Kingdom, joining Colorado, California, Florida and New York. 

Another Carnival Corp. subsidiary, P&O Cruises Australia, also announced Wednesday cancellations of its New Zealand cruises into April. 

“P&O Cruises Australia is extending its rolling pause in operations in New Zealand to departures on and before 25 April, 2021, as the cruise line and the wider industry continue to work with government and public health authorities on the appropriate time…