A court in Hungary has sentenced a Viking cruise ship captain to five and a half years in prison for his role in a collision with a tour boat that left 27 people dead in the Danube River in Budapest.
On Tuesday 26 September, 68-year-old Ukrainian national Yuri Chaplinsky, captain of the Viking Cruises river cruise ship Viking Sigyn, was found guilty of negligence leading to mass casualties after his vessel struck and severely damaged the tour boat Hableány on the night of 29 May 2019.
The incident resulted in the deaths of 25 South Korean tourists and both crewmembers on Hableány while no trace has been found of a female South Korean passenger who was also on the tour boat when it sank. Only seven of Hableány‘s passengers survived the tragedy, having suffered only minor injuries associated with hypothermia.
Prosecutors claim Chaplinsky had not been paying attention and was therefore not properly focused on navigating his vessel in the minutes prior to the crash. One of the prosecutors said the defendant had had enough time to see the smaller tour boat and manoeuvre to avoid a collision but had not done so.
Following his indictment in November 2019, Chaplinsky was offered a comparatively lighter sentence of a nine-year suspension of his boat operator’s licence on top of a nine-year prison sentence in exchange for a guilty plea. However, he rejected this proposal and instead requested a trial. Chaplinsky was acquitted of the separate charges of 35 counts of failing to give assistance.
The captain told the court that he was “deeply sorry” for the incident.
Viking was founded in 1997 with the vision that travel could be more destination focused and culturally immersive. In 2000, the company purchased Europe’s KD River Cruises in order to grow its fleet, to leverage 40 years of river cruising experience and to acquire rights to prime docking locations in key European cities.
