Hey, I paid for my ticket! I want my money back!

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January 14th, 2012

How do you mean he turned left instead of right?

Hundreds of telephones must be ringing in deserted offices around the world and in Italy today. The phones in insurance companies are unmanned on Saturdays and calling on Sunday won’t do any good either. Can you imagine the chaos that has already started and will continue for the next days, months and even years as insurance companies pass the buck from one to another? Can you explain, how, in the year 2012, a luxury cruise liner, the Costa Concordia, owned by the Carnival Corporation and operated by Costa Cruises, built in 2004 at a cost of about $570 million can hit a sand bank off the coast of Italy and end up on its side in the water with a huge hole in its bottom?

No ordinary ship

How could this ship, a modern cruise liner and the largest ship to be built in Italy at 114,500 tons, 950 feet long and 118 feet wide and able to carry 3,700 passengers and a crew of 1,100, come to such an ugly end? She is lying on her side about half submerged in the water like some mammoth sea creature waiting for the kindly sheriff to end her misery by putting a bullet through her head. The ship had 1,500 staterooms; 505 had private balconies and 55 had direct access to the central spa. The Costa Concordia had one of the world’s largest wellness centers at sea, the Samsara Spa, a two-level, 20,000 foot wellness area, with gym, a thalassotherapy pool, sauna, Turkish bath and a solarium. The ship also had four swimming pools, two with retractable covers, five spas and a poolside screen on the Pool deck. There were five onboard restaurants, thirteen bars, a cigar and cognac bar and a coffee and chocolate bar. Entertainment options included a three-level theater, casino and a discotheque. There was a children’s area equipped with PlayStation products, Grand Prix motor racing simulator and an Internet cafe.

Here come the insurance claims

In the “Claim Age” in which we live, I imagine that every single passenger and crew member who was on board on Friday evening will be lodging a claim against the ship’s owners, the Master, the helmsman, the cruise operator and anyone who has the any connection to the cruise-shipping industry. Even though the ship didn’t sink like the Titanic, who whose 100 year disaster will be commemorated in April this year, just about everything will be recovered but will have been ruined by immersion in sea water. If it is not soaked for a few weeks, the fumes of the salt will do the job.

Now what?

Naval engineers must all be hard at work working out a system of sealing the hull and hauling the giant back onto its bottom. Is there going to be fight over salvage rights, salvage fees and who gets what? Will the ship be fully repaired and made seaworthy again? Will you be booking a cruise on the Costa Concordia sometime in the future?

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 14th, 2012 at 10:44 am and is filed under Assurance / Insurance, Business, Economy, Employment, Finance, Health Insurance, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Hey, I paid for my ticket! I want my money back!

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