A cruise line is abandoning voyages through the Suez Canal and Red Sea following an attack on one of its ships by Somali priates.
MSC Cruises is instead sail from Livorno in Italy down the west coast of Africa to reach Durban via Cape Town.
Calls will be made Morocco, Senegal and Namibia en route to Cape Town and Durban.
These itineraries will be served by the luxurious MSC Sinfonia for the 2009 autumn and 2010 late spring seasons.
“The new routes represent decisive action by MSC Cruises to completely remove any threat to its passengers from Somali pirates, following a recent episode involving MSC Melody, which successfully evaded a pirate attempt some 600 nautical miles from the Somali coast on the evening of Saturday, April 25, 2009,” a company statement said.
“MSC Cruises’s decision to re-route all its African transoceaniccruises completely removes the possibility of any further pirate incidents.”
by Phil Davies
