Today in Washington, the congressional Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation will hold a public hearing titled “Cruise Industry Oversight: Recent Incidents Show Need for Stronger Focus on Consumer Protection.” Carnival’s Gerry Cahill and Royal Caribbean’s Adam Goldstein will appear as witnesses along with CLIA(Cruise Lines International Association) reps, former NTSB and US Coasrguardsmen, and cruise incident expert Ross Klein.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller is calling this hearing after he called a similar one in March 2012 after the Costa Concordia disaster. During that hearing, industry executives and CLIA assured congress that it was a one-off type of event and those instances are rare. Since then, we’ve had 2-fires and an additional cancelled cruise due to a generator. Sen. Rockerfeller got wind of it and pushed for this second hearing. It will be interesting to see if he takes a rather calm approach or, if like last time, he’s rather aggressive with the witnesses testifying.