New Life Boat Policy

After the recent cruise tragedy in January, the cruise industry is to adopt new safety measures to help familiarize staff with the loading of lifeboats. The regulations follow the Costa Concordia disaster. It has been claimed that a number of the ship’s crew were not drilled in correct evacuation procedure. Since then two cruises associations have been working on a solution, to prevent this from happening again should a tragedy occur.

The new policy was unveiled by the Cruise Lines International and the European Cruise Council. It requires all crew members to practice launching and loading a lifeboat at least once every six months to keep staff up to scratch. It will apply to all ocean-going members of both associations which include the vast majority of cruise lines around the world and will come into effect immediately.

Christine Duffy, president and CEO of CLIA said “The cruise industry continues to work on a global level to improve the safety of passengers and crew, which is our number one priority, since January of this year, and in keeping with our efforts to continuously improve operational excellence, the global cruise industry has voluntarily adopted seven wide-ranging safety policies. We remain fully committed to exploring further enhancements in a number of areas that will add to the industry’s excellent safety record.”

This is great news for the industry. Safety onboard is paramount. So with the correct training, hopefully this policy put can into place more steadfast safety procedures should the unthinkable happen again.