Originally Posted by
PAXboy
I wonder if part of this problem was the shake out happening, following Covid? That shut down changed a lot of things and some boats were scrapped - perhaps leading airlines to presume that the market would not return for some time.
No surprise that VS did not want to be part of this plan. The Group now have their own cruise line and we may imagine that - wherever possible - pax are on their own airline. Also, now that Delta owns VS, they seem to want all VS craft to be directed to feed into the USA, not feeding another company's boats.
I sit to be corrected.
I don't think your premise is correct. Yes, some older, smaller ships (not boats!) were disposed of during the pandemic. The problem lies in the fact that cruise lines were committed to purchasing ships, normally of ever bigger passenger capacity, whilst at the same time, during the pandemic, carriers were reducing capacity.
Thus P&O now find themselves with two ships in the Caribbean, (including the new Arvia with around 5500 pax) but cannot find enough aircraft seats to fill them. Pre-covid, P&O would probably have assumed that BA and VS would pick up the slack, but obviously neither airline now feels the need to operate low yield charter flights.
To a certain extent, P&O have painted themselves into a corner. In order to fill their ships they are offering 14 day fly/cruises to the Caribbean at £1400 pp or less. They now don't have enough profit margin to find alternate charter flights to Maleth, even if any such operator exists.