Norwegian Cancels Farewell Cruise Over Red Sea Security
Norwegian Cruise Line has cancelled the farewell voyage of the Norwegian Sky, a nineteen-night sailing due to depart Greece on 9 September and transit the Suez Canal and the Red Sea before arriving at Muscat. The company told booked guests that the decision related to security concerns in the Middle East, and that after careful review, with the safety and security of guests and crew as the guiding priority, it had made the difficult decision to cancel the sailing.
The itinerary had been built entirely around waters that are now contested. After departing Piraeus the ship was scheduled to call at Rhodes, Alexandria, Port Sokhna, Safaga, Sharm el-Sheikh, Jeddah and Aqaba before transiting to Oman, taking in Greece, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia along the way. There is no version of that voyage that avoids the Red Sea, which is why an adjustment was not available and the sailing had to go altogether.
The cancellation follows an earlier round of changes. In July the company had already cut calls in the Arabian Gulf and shortened the voyage from an original twenty-one nights, having initially planned to end it in Dubai. The line said that given the ongoing uncertainty in the region it no longer had the level of confidence needed to deliver the experience guests expect, and acknowledged that many of those booked had shown considerable patience and flexibility through the process.
The compensation package reflects how late the decision came. Guests receive a full monetary refund of the cruise fare to the original form of payment, plus a future cruise credit worth half the current voyage fare, added to a fifteen percent credit issued earlier when the itinerary was first changed. The combined credit can be applied to any published sailing through the end of 2027. Flights booked through the company are cancelled and refunded automatically, and passengers who made independent arrangements are offered up to 300 dollars each towards change or cancellation fees not recovered from airlines or insurers.
The ship itself is on her way out of the fleet. She was acquired by an Indian cruise operator in 2025 and is scheduled for delivery in October, which is why the September sailing was billed as a farewell. Repositioning voyages of this kind exist precisely because they cross regions rather than circulating within one, and they are the first product to disappear when a corridor closes. For the cruise sector the Red Sea has now been effectively unavailable for long enough that itineraries are being planned around its absence rather than around its return.
