Celebrity Cruises (USA, a subsidiary of Royal Caribbean Cruises, USA) has been forced to take one of its premier cruise ships, Summit, out of service again for yet another radial bearing failure in its Rolls-Royce Mermaid pod drive propulsion system.
The ship is currently in dry dock for emergency repairs to the starboard pod drive.
This marks over a dozen cruises the company has had to cancel to replace bearings in its pod drive systems. Each cancelled cruise costs Royal Caribbean between $6 million and $10 million in repairs, refunds, lost revenue and enticement discounts it must give on future cruises.
The company's four Millennium-class cruise ships are each equipped with two Rolls-Royce Mermaid pod propulsion systems. Two large bearings, approximately 2-1/2 feet in diameter, carry the propeller shaft in each pod. The bearings are apparently failing under thrust loading. Summit's speed was limited to 18 knots when the latest bearing failure was identified.
In service for just over two years, Summit has had its pod drive bearings replaced multiple times, as have the other Millennium-class ships. In 2002, Rolls-Royce released a redesigned propeller shaft bearing which was supposed to hold up better under load, but has not.
In mid-2003, Celebrity filed a $300 million suit against Rolls-Royce and Alstom Power Conversion, to cover lost revenue and costs related to at least four separate bearing failures and other problems in the Mermaid pod drive systems. The company charges Rolls-Royce and Alstom deceived Celebrity about the unproven pod drive technology in its Millennium-class cruise ships.
All four cruise ships have been forced into emergency dry dock repairs multiple times to replace failed pod drive propeller shaft bearings. Celebrity's Millennium ship has had more than ten pod drive related failures since its launch in 2000. Celebrity's most recent pod drive problem was with its Infinity cruise ship, back in drydock in March 2004 for its third set of replacement bearings.
In its suit, Celebrity charged the Mermaid pod drive systems, "turned out to be a defectively designed and built product which was in fact at an experimental stage of its development when it was installed. These recurring failures cost the company hundreds of million of dollars, for which the lawsuit seeks restitution." The company went on to claim Rolls Royce and Alstom Power Conversion willfully misrepresented the Mermaid pod drive system, and that it was, "deceptively and fraudulently marketed."
Although Rolls-Royce claimed it initiated a three-month detailed probe into the Mermaid system problems, Royal Caribbean believed there it was a coverup. "The repeated investigations, trumped-up fixes, and expert committees instituted by Rolls-Royce and Alstom have been nothing more than an elaborate charade to cover up the truth. Furthermore, Rolls-Royce and Alstom have refused to disclose to Royal Caribbean critical information in their possession regarding the problems with the bearings and other components of the Mermaids," they said in their complaint. DEMAND
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