Cruises can be fun vacations during the summer, giving passengers the chance to experience new locations along with great weather. Modern cruise ships are massive vessels that include many of the same comforts found on land, like movie theaters and best-in-class dining. Some include amenities like rock climbing walls, slides and entire arcades and children’s zones.
Most cruises also offer entertainment on board, giving passengers a show to go along with their journey. Cruise travel can be extremely enjoyable, but thousands of passengers on a recent trip experienced a rare issue after the ship briefly lost power miles away from the coast.
According to the Italian Coast Guard, the MSC World Europa was eight nautical miles from the island of Ponza when it experienced an electrical problem with its engines. The ship, which is currently sailing through the Mediterranean, lost propulsion with over 6,400 guests and 2,000 crew members on board.
Italian officials noted that the ship was able to maintain essential services for passengers during the power loss. The Coast Guard did not state how long the ship lost propulsion, but said that it eventually regained full power and returned to its original course without help.
MSC told USA TODAY in a statement that passengers were notified of the delay, and that there were “no safety issues” as a result. On Tuesday, the cruise line said that the ship was in its next scheduled port of Messina in Sicily, and that it would be heading to Valletta, Malta later that evening.
This isn’t the first issue of its kind on a cruise ship this summer. A Celebrity Cruise ship was forced to briefly drift after it too lost power off the coast of Italy. The outage lasted for just under three hours, and Celebrity’s parent company Royal Caribbean noted that the ship experienced a “technical issue.”
The World Europa launched in 2022, and is the first in MSC’s World Class of ships. Each ship is estimated to weigh over 200,000 gross tonnage and comes with more than 2,700 cabins. The ships can reach a top speed of up to 22.7 knots, and they’re all longer than 1,000 square feet.
The MSC World America is the second ship in this class, and it made its debut among the fleet earlier this year. The third ship in the class is tentatively titled the MSC World Asia, and is scheduled to make its debut in 2026.
