Learning from failures in cruise ship industry: The blackout of Viking Sky in Hustadvika, Norway

• Published in: Engineering Failure Analysis
• Main Authors: Ibrion, Mihaela, Paltrinieri, Nicola, Nejad, Amir R.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Science 2021
• Subjects: Antarctic; Arctic; Hustadvika; Norway; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/11250/2738092; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engfailanal.2021.105355

This article brings to attention learning from the failure - blackout, loss of propulsion and near grounding - of Viking Sky cruise ship which occurred in Hustadvika, Norway, in March 2019. Failures and accidents in the cruise ship industry attract the global media and can severely impact reputation and business performance of companies and authorities involved. A system approach investigation and analysis - CAST - was employed with the aim to maximize learning from the Viking Sky’s failure through a systematic approach and to contribute to failure reduction in the cruise ship industry. Three main recommendations emerged from this study: an overview of the accident or failure precursors and resilience indicators; safety recommendations for other cruise ships; lessons and strategies of actions for the increased cruise operations in the Arctic and Antarctic areas. It was found that several accident or failure precursors, for example, a low level of lubricating oil, the failure of a turbocharger, an inoperative large diesel generator, lack of functionality for safety equipment due to bad weather, and others precursors contributed to failure and highly critical situation encountered by Viking Sky in Hustadvika. Resilience indicators such as the master’s immediate decision to launch mayday, the crew preparedness, and the way how the emergency situation was handled were found to have positive impacts on critical situation of Viking Sky. This article highlights also that adaptations and improvement of standards and regulations for harsh environmental conditions can play an important role in prevention of marine accidents. Furthermore, for a better understanding of correlation between environmental loads and their effects on machinery systems, digital solutions such as digital twin for condition monitoring of cruise ships in the Polar areas are seen as possible innovative solutions yet to be fully implemented in the marine industry. publishedVersion This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.