Isle of Man Steam Packet Managing Director, Brian Thomson has labelled a BBC article regarding the Arrow as “fake news”.
Earlier today the BBC reported that “an agreement to charter the Arrow was reached in the last few weeks after the governments trialled the 163m (534ft) Finlandia Seaways in December”.
The article states that “the BBC understands it could be used to get supplies on and off the islands”.
Fake news
Talking today (January 3) to a Manx News journalist, Mr Thomson said “there is no charter arrangement in place”.
Thomson said: “I don’t know where the BBC got that idea from, it’s not true. It is fake news if you want to call it that.”
He clarified that the vessels owned by the Company will always be a priority for the Isle of Man, instead of being chartered.
The Arrow
Industrial action has caused Steam Packet bosses to deploy the cargo ship “Arrow” to operate some overnight freight sailings.
The Company has therefore been forced to implement the following timetable:
- 0800 Douglas – Heysham MANXMAN
- 1415 Heysham – Douglas MANXMAN
- 1700 Douglas – Heysham ARROW
- 0130 Heysham – Douglas ARROW
While this will affect a relatively large number of sailings, from a customer perspective, the Company has tried to minimise disruption by maintaining the more popular daytime sailings for passengers travelling to and from the Isle of Man.
All passengers on affected sailings will be contacted by the reservations team and offered transfers or full refunds.
Freight service will be maintained by Arrow for the period of the disruption.
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