To complicate matters further, most of the carriers Norwegian was working with did not have preestablished landing rights with the Dominican Republic. The Points Guy will not share or sell your email. I would like to subscribe to The Points Guy newsletters and special email promotions. The conversation, according to Sommer, went something like this: “OK, not quite sure if we’re going to need you or not, and we won’t know for a few hours, but if we need you, what type of planes can you put out? How fast can you turn them?” The planesĮven before the decision was made that passengers would not sail home with the ship, Norwegian’s travel department reached out to the three or four charter flight companies they work with regularly. It wasn’t always pretty, but here’s how Norwegian Cruise Line pulled it off, according to its president and CEO, Harry Sommer. It was spring break, with record numbers of people traveling due to pent-up pandemic demand. And roughly 350 passengers were not carrying passports because they’re not required for a round-trip Florida cruise. To complicate matters, the nearby Puerto Plata Airport (POP) is tiny without a large number of daily commercial flights. Their mission: Fly more than 3,000 passengers back to Florida from the Dominican Republic in time to catch their Saturday flights home - just four days away. Suddenly, the cruise line’s home office team had to drop their daily responsibilities and transform into an emergency evacuation squad. The bad news? The line’s expert consultants thought it best that passengers not be on the ship for that transit.įor more TPG news delivered each morning to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter. The good news was that Norwegian Escape, which had been damaged when it ran aground off Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic on Monday, March 14, was deemed seaworthy and able to sail back to its home in Port Canaveral, Florida. A week ago Tuesday, Norwegian Cruise Line executives got some good news - and some bad news.
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