Do Cruise Ship Crew Pay for Their Flights?

Cruise ships sail all around the world and employ crew from all around the world. Cruise ships on average have 40+ nationalities represented onboard within its crew. This means getting cruise ship crew to their ships takes a lot of logistical effort and inevitably involves crew traveling by air to join their ship. When a crew member is flying to a contract or home from a contract – how does it work? Do cruise ship crew pay for their flights? And, additionally – do they get to keep all those air miles?

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Do Cruise Ship Crew Pay for Their Flights? Most of the Time, No.

Most of the time cruise ship crew do not pay for their flights to and from the ship. Additionally, the cruise lines also provide or will pay for transportation to the ship from the airport or from a hotel.

While we could figure this is out of the generosity of their heart – it’s actually part of MLC 2006 or the Maritime Labour Convention 2006. This is a very large document that discusses the health and well being of seafarers as well as various rights they have. The majority of port-states that the cruise lines ships are registered to have agreed to participate in the MLC 2006 and provide those protections to their crew members.

MLC 2006, Title 2.5 “Repatriation” States as follows:

There is actually quite a lot in this section to read through. If you want to take a full read of it you can find a copy of the MLC 2006 here.

When you read further through the document one of the “justified reasons” as mentioned above in A2.5.1(b)(ii) includes for medical reasons. Imagine being a crew member, being considered medically unfit to work (for whatever reason) and then having to buy an emergency plane ticket home. So grateful that seafarers rights are protected through means like the MLC 2006 for situations like this.

While there aren’t specifics about joining the ship, the expense of leaving the ship falls entirely on the ship owner (assuming they are required to follow the MLC 2006). Most cruise lines opt to pay for the flights for their crew to join the ship. This is a good decision on the cruise lines part as flights can be quite expensive and would be very prohibitive for many crew joining a ship.

For Some Positions the Cruise Line Doesn’t Pay for The Flights

By far and away most flights to and from the ship are paid for by the cruise line. However, there are some positions onboard where the cruise line does not pay for the flights. However, this does not mean that the crew member necessarily pays for the flights. When this situation comes up it is nearly always involving a partner company of some sort. Onboard a ship there are lots of businesses working onboard. Often the shops, casino, spa, and art dealers are all contracted through outside companies. In this case it is often that the agreement with these partner companies is that those companies will pay for the crew members flights. So, technically the cruise line isn’t paying for the flights, but rather the partner company.

Do Crew Get Reimbursed For Food While On Their Way to the Ship?

Recently when leaving a ship a coworker was surprised to find that they were given money to spend on food during their travel. This is decided on a per diem amount based on the time of travel from the ship to the agreed upon repatriation destination (usually your home airport). So, if for instance you leave the ship at 10am and you get to your home airport at 10pm you should theoretically get enough money – or have a reimbursement option – for a lunch and dinner meal on your day of travel.

Furthermore, cruise lines often choose to fly their employees to their joining city the day before they join the ship. If a cruise line opts to do this, the cruise line will pay for this hotel accommodation.

This is for three logistically minded reasons.

1. Travel Delays
   • The first is that it allows time for any travel related delays without impacting the crew members joining date. Whether it’s a missed flight connection or a cancelled flight and getting rerouted, this extra bit of time can be critical especially because most of the time the ship crew members are joining are only in port for a few hours and will depart late afternoon/early evening.
     
2. Everyone Joins the Ship at the Same Time
   • The second logistical benefit of having crew stay at a hotel the night before is that it means all crew will be joining the ship at the same time. The bus will come (typically quite early in the morning) to pick up crew at the hotel and will bus them all to the ship at once. This ends up being less work for the onboard team – for welcome aboard presentations, paperwork collection – it’s easier to do these things once and with a group than 20, 30, 40 or 100 times separately during a day.
     
3. People Can Get to Work Before the New Passengers Arrive on Embarkation Day
   • Everyone that is onboard a cruise ship for work is there to do a job. If you are joining a ship most likely someone that does the same job as you is leaving the ship. This means that, on arguably the busiest day of the cruise (the home port or turnaround port), the ship will potentially be short staffed. There is a short window between when guests leave the ship and when guests are boarding the ship. The crew that are joining the ship will often be critical to those day 1 operations for the passengers joining the ship.

If the cruise line had to wait for a whole bunch of different flights to land crew members might not get to the ship until mid-afternoon, well after when they’re critically needed to onboard programming and service. (Never mind being stressed that they might miss the ship!)

Do Cruise Ship Crew Get to Keep Their Air Miles When They Fly?

Yes! Cruise ship crew absolutely get to keep their air miles when they fly. Now, this isn’t quite as lucrative as it once was. Many airlines are moving towards an air miles structure where part of the miles you earn is based on how much the ticket cost. In that regard the crew member would not get those miles. However, the actual miles earned based on miles flown is for the crew member to keep.

Most cruise lines will have partnerships with certain airlines. Most often these partnerships are with the larger airlines and those within those companies partner airlines – think: American, Delta (and Alaskan), and United from the US and British Airways, KLM, Emirates, and such internationally. Cruise lines do not typically fly crew members to ships on airlines such as RyanAir, Jet2Airways, or SouthWest for example. These airlines are typically part of an airline group where you can earn miles when you fly on any of their partner airlines, too. For instance, an American Aadvantage number works when you fly on British Airways, Delta works with KLM, etc. Most of the time if you have a frequent flyer number with the big airlines in your home country they will have partners with most other airlines you fly.

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Do Cruise Ship Crew Get to Keep Hotel Points?

This one is an unfortunate no – or at least not in my experience. In the US I’ve stayed with many of the major brands (that I have loyalty numbers with) and have yet to have one let me collect points for a booking made by my employer.

Note: It’s always worth asking though! Maybe you’ll find that one hotel that lets you collect points when staying there when your cruise ship company books it.

Most Travel Expenses To and From the Ship for Cruise Ship Crew – Including Flights – Are Paid for by the Cruise Company

It’s great that travel expenses are included for cruise ship crew getting to and from their home airport. This otherwise would be a huge, and often prohibitive expense for crew members.

Additionally, in times like the pandemic layup, flights had to be coordinated through government agencies to allow cruise ship crew to disembark (in places like Manila this was known as the “Green Lane”). It would be nearly impossible logistically for cruise ship crew to organize flights like these on their own.