Steel Cut for First LNG Cruise Ship
A steel cutting ceremony was held on February 21, 2017 for the world's first cruise ship that will be run completely on LNG.
According to MANA, the ceremony was held at the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg. AIDA ordered two vessels from Meyer Werft in 2015. The vessels, with a size in excess of 180,000 GT and around 2,500 cabins each will enter the AIDA fleet in the fall of 2018 and spring 2021 respectively.
AIDA Cruises will thus become the first cruise shipping company in the world with the capability to operate its new generation of ships using 100 percent LNG.
The new Helios Class ships will be powered by LNG engines made by Caterpillar / MaK which fulfil the strictest environmental regulations. Energy efficiency was the key focus of the entire engineering work. The planning and design activities gave absolute priority to heat recovery, innovative electric motors, LED lighting, ship automation geared to energy efficiency, optimized underwater paintwork to reduce resistance, weight-optimized material selection and many other features.