Governor of Alaska threatens to sue U.S. over cruise travel ban

By: Alana Derose

seattletimes.com

Alaska may join Florida in the suing of the CDC in order to get cruise ships sailing again.

When confronted with this issue, Alaska governor Mike Dunleavy, stated a law suit is a "real possibility".

Dunleavy also took it to Fox News to explain the predicament of Alaskan citizens who are enduring a second year in a row without any cruise ship tourism and revenue they would usually bring in.

"In 2019, twice as many people than the number who live in the state came to Alaska and took a cruise," commissioner Louis Sola told Travel Weekly. "With the suspension of the cruise season, the economic activity of 1.3 million was wiped out of the Alaskan economy for the year. Under the best of circumstances and in any other state, there would be no disguising the consequences of losing that much revenue. In Alaska, in the context of the cruise industry, the consequences are greatly exacerbated."

Dunleavy believes, "the decision will be crushing to Alaska", influencing his decision in whether to join Florida in the suing of the federal government.

Last week Florida governor Ron Desantis announced that "his state has filed a lawsuit against the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and CDC, demanding cruise ships be reopened immediately," according to Royal Caribbean Blog.

This is an attempt to get the CDC to drop their Conditional Sailing Order, which is preventing cruise ships to be able to sail because of the numerous restrictions, while other forms of travel and entertainment such as airlines, theme parks, casinos and trains are able to operate with no issue.

Alaska gov. Dunleavy states Alaska will have about a $3.3 billion loss over the course of no sailings for the 2020 and 2021 season, "that's in a state with about a fifty six billion dollar GDP, so it's going to be significant."

Dunleavy tries to persuade the federal government by highlighting the fact that Alaska is among the best in the nation when it comes to vaccination rates and low Covid 19 cases.

"If you look at Alaska's numbers, if you look at our data, we're doing this better than anybody. We know what we're doing. All we want is the opportunity to work with the industry."

Alaska legislators have also spoken up, as they sent a congressional delegation to the white house, pressuring the Biden administration "to be more transparent and timely in their efforts to develop guidance for the resumption of operations for the cruise ship industry,", RCB stated.

They went even further in asking Canada to reexamine their ban on cruise travel. Then in March they introduced a bill to allow ships to cruise without actually stopping in Canada.

Cruise lines such as Royal Caribbean are still planning to sail their Alaskan cruise in June of 2021 but nothings 100 percent.