The nearly 1,700 passengers on Norwegian Jewel began disembarking on Monday, March 23, at Honolulu Harbor, despite the 30-day state pause on cruise ship activity due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
According to Hawaii's Department of Transportation, the ship was experiencing “propulsion problems that require repairs at the next port, which is Honolulu Harbor". The repairs must be made without passengers on board, prompting the change to allow disembarkation. The NCL-Norwegian Cruise Lines ship arrived Sunday afternoon at Honolulu Harbor, but no crew or passengers were then allowed to get off.
There are no suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19 with the nearly 1,000 crew members and 2,000 passengers on the vessel.
State officials are currently working on a plan to isolate the cruisers from the general public as well as transport them directly from the cruise to their planes.
An NCL spokesperson said that charter flights had been arranged for all passengers on Monday and Tuesday to Los Angeles, London UK, Sydney Australia, Vancouver Canada and Frankfurt Germany. All guests will have to remain onboard until 3 hours prior to their scheduled flight.
For other Norwegian Jewel accidents and incidents see at the ship's CruiseMinus page.
For Coronavirus updates on cruise ship quarantines (infected passengers and crew) and top-pandemic countries (COVID-19 cases and deaths, daily updated statistics) see at CruiseMapper's Norovirus page.