Operational incidents show a decline in cruise industry

According to a CLIA report published few months ago, the number of significant operational incidents has been on a decreasing trend over the last eight years. The report analyzes operational incidents which were reported in the cruise industry from 2009 to 2016, comparing them with other industries.

G. P. Wild Limited published a report, after Cruise Lines International Association’s (CLIA) wished to determine the reliability of cruise ships from the perspective of analyzing the number and type of operational incidents (OI) during cruises, both at sea and in port.

The study analyzed the levels of fatality that happened in the ocean going cruise industry over the years 2009 to 2016. In 2016, the industry recorded fatality numbers below the six year average, and there were no passenger fatalities due to operational incidents, while it also recorded a reduction in 2016.

The key findings of the report can be summarized as following:

The capacity of the cruise ship fleet has grown by 41.5% percent since 2009.
Over the last eight years, significant operational incidents are on a downward trend with an average of 19.4 incidents a year, down from a seven-year average of 19.9 in 2015.
Averages of 21.1 minor operational incidents are reported each year, a figure which remains stable.

As far as cruise passenger fatalities from operational incidents are concerned, these are low compared to other common modes of transportation. Namely:

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In 2013, when there is the most recent comparable data, the incidence of such passenger and crew fatalities on a cruise was one of the lowest with 0.15 per billion passenger miles compared to 0.09 among world airlines, 0.73 on US general aviation, 7.4 on U.S. highways and 8.8 on US rail;
In 2016 the figure for cruise was 0.05 fatalities per billion passenger miles with an average of 0.15 over the eight-year period analysed.
In the eight years 2009 to 2016, man overboard incidents had been declining with an incidence of 0.000024 overboard reports per active lower berth (synonymous with a cabin’s bed) in 2016. This is 37% of the figure recorded in 2009.
From 2009 to 2016, the number of passenger fatalities from man overboard incidents had fallen from 15 to 8.