The passenger shipping industry is probably facing the greatest disruption since the Second World War as both the demand and supply sides are equally hit at the same time.
The outbreak of the coronavirus has led to a sharp fall in the demand for cruises, as it has done for any other kind of travel.
At the same time, many governments have closed borders and imposed other kinds of restrictions on travel and movement.
Airlines that also provide connections to and from ports of embarkation and disembarkation for many passengers have been forced to suspend services as a result of the restrictions.
Consequently, many cruise operators have come to the conclusion that they are unable to operate their programmes as scheduled for the immediate future.
This means that the affected passengers will have to be compensated for their canceled holidays. This puts cash flow under strain, even if lines did not offer a cash refund, but an option to book a cruise some time in the future.
Previous challenges the industry has faced have principally affected mainly one side of the supply - demand equation, with the demand being the more frequent part affected.
This was the case with the sinking of Costa Concordia in 2013, the financial crisis five years earlier and e.g. the events of 911 in 2001.
The last named affected the supply side to a degree as well as American passengers did not want to fly abroad to join a cruise and ships had to be repositioned so that they could based in US ports.
The oil crises of 1973 and 1980 hit the supply side very hard as the cost of fuel rocketed. The first one in particular resulted in the removal from service many ships that had been built for liner trades rather than for cruising and had fuel hungry steam turbine machinery. Some ships that never resumed commercial trading were just 10 years old.
Together with a rapid inflation that followed, it also put and end to deliveries of purpose built cruise tonnage, which would only resume early in the following decade.
The present crisis has not affected the cruise industry alone. Many ferry services have been suspended, ranging from ones between Japan and China to several in the Baltic as well.
The last time passenger ship operators faced a similar situation was probably at the start of the Second World War.
But the effects of the coronavirus crisis have, perhaps, been more immediate than that of the war: it reached global scale in a matter of some two months. This made it impossible for the cruise industry to redeploy its mobile assets, as had been the case in several, more limited regional challenges in the past.
As the war started in Europe in the autumn of 1939, among major maritime nations it affected mostly Germany, France and Britain and commercial liner services of passenger ships flying their flags quickly came to an end. Cruising was only an offshoot of liner operations at this time and would remain so until the late 1960s.
However, Italy only joined the war in 1940 and the US and Japan in the following year. Some commercial services of these nations continued until they themselves became involved in the conflict.
The war resulted in massive losses of life and ships. The vessels that survived required major refits, often lasting years rather than months due to the amount of work needed plus material and labour shortages.
This will not be the case with the present coronavirus crisis.
Also, the current predictions indicate that the epidemic would last months, not years. The economic and perhaps even political consequences may be another matter.
