I cannot wait to see smiling faces again. This has been one of the hardest parts of the masking policies, seeing unmasked customers and masked employees, it doesn't feel good at all.
I've been in the airline industry now for 26 years (just celebrated my 26th year on September 15th started straight out of high school), I've gone through furloughs after 9/11, bankruptcy, and mergers, I've seen people loose their jobs, departments shutter, entire stations closed, because the airline industry was in survival mode.
In 2020 and in 2021 the nations airlines received a total of 3 government bailouts to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. The cruise line industry unfortunately was left out in the cold. The nations airlines were allowed to operate without any government oversight during covid, while cruise lines were forced to shut down. Some of the money the nations airlines received from the government does NOT have to be paid back at all, some of the money does have to be paid back but at unbelievable low interest rates. Cruise lines like Royal Caribbean were forced to borrow billions of dollars. I'm sure every single penny has to be paid back with interest. Who knows what the interest rates are but I'm willing to bet Royal Caribbean's interest rates on their covid related debt is much higher than the interest rate the nations airlines are paying on their covid related government backed debt.
No one wants to see anyone loose their job, but when a company has gone through what Royal Caribbean has been through without any financial assistance from the government sometimes cost cutting measure have to be put in place. Cruising is back and Royal has taken delivery of Odyssey, Wonder, and next year Icon will join the fleet. That is all exciting news for their customers because we all appreciate the fact we can cruise again. However, Royal Caribbean executives still have to deal with paying down all the covid related debt they were forced to take on just to survive. I think the last thing any of use want to see is Royal Caribbean forced into bankruptcy, or Royal Caribbean forced into a merger with another cruise line. To keep that from happening the executives at times must make hard, difficult decisions that unfortunately will impact the lives of some of their employees.
