AIDAperla

Overview

AIDAperla is a Hyperion-class cruise ship for AIDA Cruises and, with her sister AIDAprima, the ship that took the German line from the roughly 71,000 GT Sphinx generation to the 125,000 GT big-ship league. She was built not by AIDA's usual German builder, Meyer Werft, but by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries at Nagasaki, Japan — a break in the line's building tradition that defined the whole programme. The two Hyperion ships were ordered in 2011 for delivery in 2015 and 2016; both arrived late, after a difficult construction at a yard re-entering large cruise ship building, and AIDAperla was not completed until 27 April 2017. She was formally named in June 2017 by the model and presenter Lena Gercke. For AIDA she proved the line could operate a ship nearly twice the size of its Sphinx fleet while keeping its informal, German-market club-ship character.

Key specifications

The dataset records 125,572 GT, a length of 299.95 m, a beam of 37.6 m, a maximum capacity of 4,350, Mitsubishi hull 2301, and IMO 9636967, with no speed figure given. Her article confirms the tonnage, hull number and IMO, and refines the rest. It gives an overall length of 300.00 m and a moulded beam of 37.00 m — the dataset's 37.6 m is best read as the extreme beam — a draught of 8.25 m, 18 decks in total with 16 passenger decks, 1,643 cabins and a double-occupancy capacity of 3,286, with 4,350 as the maximum. It also supplies the speed the dataset omits: 22.5 knots cruising, from three Caterpillar 12VM43C diesels plus a dual-fuel unit, driving two ABB Azipod thrusters, with a crew of about 900. The dataset's launched year also needs correction: 2017 is her completion and entry-into-service year; she was launched on 20 March 2016. Tonnage here is GT.

Design and construction

The Hyperion design was a step-change rather than a stretch. Where the Sphinx ships were European mid-size vessels, AIDAprima and AIDAperla were conceived as year-round, weather-resilient big ships, with far more interior public space — a response to operating from northern European ports in all seasons. The design carried forward AIDA signatures, notably the Theatrium social core, but at a new scale, and introduced the Lanai cabin concept — cabins with a wintergarden-like veranda space — that profiles of the ship singled out at delivery. Construction, however, is the real story. The order, placed on 2 November 2011 in her article's chronology, went to Mitsubishi because German yards were full; the Nagasaki yard then struggled with the ships' complexity, cabin design changes and its own financial losses on the programme, and delivery slipped by roughly a year per ship. Her keel was laid on 14 December 2012, she was launched on 20 March 2016, and she was completed on 27 April 2017, reaching AIDA in May.

Naming, launch and maiden voyage

The ship spent part of her building life under a different intended name — AIDAmia appears as a former project name in secondary profiles — before being delivered as AIDAperla, the "pearl" pairing naturally with her sister AIDAprima. Launched at Nagasaki on 20 March 2016, she was delivered in May 2017 and formally named in June 2017, with Lena Gercke as godmother. The dataset dates both launch and maiden voyage simply to 2017; the maiden voyage year is right, the launch year is not, for the reason given in the specifications section above. Her naming, in Palma de Mallorca in the accounts of the ceremony, closed a six-year programme that had begun with an order intended to deliver her a full two years earlier.

Career by operator

AIDAperla has had a single operator and, in service, a single name.

Her registered port, like the rest of the AIDA fleet, is Genoa, Italy, reflecting legal ownership within the Carnival group's Italian company rather than her market. Her career significance lies inside that single line: she and AIDAprima spent their first seasons proving the big-ship AIDA formula — including winter operations from Hamburg that the Sphinx ships were not designed for — and established the template the still larger Helios class (AIDAnova and sisters, built back at Meyer Werft) then followed. No transfer, charter or renaming is recorded for this hull, and the dataset's operator history, a single entry for AIDA Cruises, is complete on the evidence of her article.

Onboard character

Her onboard character is the Sphinx formula industrialised: informality, buffet-led dining variety and activity-led days, rebuilt at almost twice the tonnage. Contemporary design descriptions emphasised light, pastel interiors with pale wood — a deliberate Scandinavian brightness rather than the darker, glossier style of American big ships — and a wide spread of cabin types, with the Lanai wintergarden cabins and patio-deck cabins with direct access toward the indoor pool area as the design's talking points. The all-weather concept is the era-defining element: generous enclosed space, an indoor pool environment and a four-season activity deck were answers to the commercial problem of filling a 3,286-berth ship from Hamburg in February. As with every guide in this directory, that is a description of the ship as designed in 2017, not a list of venues as they stand after later refits — AIDA announced an "Evolution" modernisation for the Hyperion pair for 2027–28, which will change interiors but not the design logic described here.

Major refits and incidents

No major refit had taken place within the period covered by her own article; the announced AIDA Evolution drydock for AIDAperla was scheduled in trade reporting for spring 2027, in Marseille, after this guide's dataset snapshot, and is noted here only as a planned programme, not as completed work. One serious incident is documented in her article. On 22 October 2023, while en route from Hamburg to La Coruña, a crew member was reported missing, believed overboard, off Ramsgate. AIDAperla returned to the area and a nine-hour search by an HM Coastguard helicopter and RNLI lifeboats was carried out; the crew member was not found and the search was called off. The entry is recorded here from the BBC reporting cited in her article; no further finding is stated in the sources used, and none is added.

Sister ships and class

The Hyperion class consists of two ships: AIDAprima (2016) and AIDAperla (2017), both built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries at Nagasaki, hulls 2300 and 2301 respectively in the programme's numbering — the dataset gives AIDAperla as hull 2301, consistent with her article. They are near-identical sisters, sharing the 125,572 GT measurement, the Azipod machinery arrangement and the all-weather layout. The class name, from the Greek Titan Hyperion, signalled the height step the ships represented for AIDA. Commercially the class was a bridge: it proved AIDA's market could absorb 125,000-ton ships, but the construction difficulties at Nagasaki also ended Mitsubishi's return to large cruise building, and AIDA's next class returned to Meyer Werft at a still larger size.

Fate and where she is now

The dataset records her as active, with the fate "Operating," and her article confirms her in service with AIDA Cruises, registered at Genoa. She is a young big ship in her first operator's hands, with no sale or renaming on record, and with a planned modernisation announced for later in the decade — the normal mid-life pattern for a Carnival-group vessel of her size. Her historical place is secure regardless of her later career: she is one half of the pair that moved Germany's largest cruise brand into the big-ship era, and the last large cruise ship completed in Japan for a European line in her period.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDAperla