Carnival Cruise Line threatens to remove its ships from US home ports to sail elsewhere

Carnival Cruise Line threatened to move its ships out of U.S. waters Tuesday after canceling additional all cruises departing from U.S. ports through June 30. 

“While we have not made plans to move Carnival Cruise Line ships outside of our U.S. homeports, we may have no choice but to do so in order to resume our operations which have been on ‘pause’ for over a year,” Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line, said in a statement provided by spokesperson Vance Gulliksen.

Carnival has 14 home ports along the east and west coasts and the Gulf of Mexico in the U.S., Gulliksen said.

“We remain committed to working with the Administration and the CDC to find a workable solution that best serves the interest of public health,” Duffy said in the release, adding that Carnival is asking that the “cruise industry be treated on par” with other sectors of the travel industry “as well as U.S. society at large.”

The threat comes on the heels of new guidance published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Friday detailing the second phase of its Conditional Sailing Order — which the cruise industry had pushed the agency to lift the week prior. 

Although there was new information on the benchmarks cruise lines need to hit before carrying paying passengers once more, there was no word on when cruising will be able to restart in U.S. waters.

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