‘Nobody Cares About the Little People’: Cruise Crews File Covid-19 Suit

“There are a large number of cruise ships anchored off the coast of South Florida, stretching from Palm Beach down to Miami,” Mr. Howard said. “So far so good, but time is of the essence. They can’t stay there forever.”

Mr. Howard helped arrange flights for at least 2,500 Carnival Cruises crew members out of Miami on Ethiopian Airlines charters, he said. The repatriations involved having the crew members leave the ships on small tender boats and transfer directly by bus to an airplane tarmac without ever entering a terminal, he said.

Brian Salerno, senior vice president of maritime policy for the Cruise Line Industry Association, said that crew members are well taken care of and have medical staff on board.

“As ships are laid up, many of the crew members will seek to go home, but there are some countries that are reluctant to have their own citizens return because of fear of international travel,” Mr. Salerno said in an interview last month. “If crew remain on the ships, the companies are certainly looking after them. If they don’t have a way to get home, I am sure many of them are going to remain on the ship.”

Michael Winkleman, Ms. Nedeltcheva’s lawyer, said the cruise companies took too long to react to the severity of the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s really been a nightmare for the crew in a lot of ways,” he said. “Even the folks testing positive, they are not getting medical care, they are not getting updates. They are halfway around the world from their families, alone, in quarantine. Morale is extremely low on the ships.”

Roger Frizzell, a spokesman for Carnival Cruises, said his company was able to arrange some charters to get crew members home, but that doing so “has become more difficult every day.” Thousands remained at sea, he said.