Escorted by tugboats, the Viking Sky arrived in the port of Molde yesterday evening, television images showed. Nearly a third of its 1,373 passengers and crew had already been airlifted off the ship. The cruise liner lost power and started drifting on Saturday afternoon 2km off a stretch of Norwegian coastline notorious for shipwrecks.
The captain sent out a Mayday prompting authorities to launch the airlift in difficult conditions rather than run the risk of leaving people on board. Some 460 of the 1,373 people on the ship had been taken off by five helicopters before the airlift was halted.
Police said 17 people had been taken to hospital. One person more than 90 years old and two 70-year-olds suffered serious fractures. With three of four engines restarted yesterday, two tugs towed the vessel away from dangerous reefs before it set sail for Molde, 500km northwest of Oslo, under its own power.