| IMO | 9802396 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 145,281 GT |
| Length | 330.0 m |
| Beam | 38.4 m |
| Passenger capacity (double) | 3660 |
| Crew | 1346 |
| Service speed | 21.9 knots |
| Builder | Fincantieri |
| Yard | Monfalcone |
| Hull number | 6268 |
| Launched | 2018 |
| Maiden voyage | 2019 |
| Class | Royal-class cruise ship |
| Operator | Princess Cruises |
| Status | Active |
Overview
Sky Princess is a Royal-class cruise ship operated by Princess Cruises, a brand of Carnival Corporation & plc. She is the fourth ship of the Royal class, after Royal Princess (2013), Regal Princess (2014) and Majestic Princess (2017), and the second Princess ship to carry the name — the first Sky Princess served the line from 1988 to 2000. She was built by Fincantieri at Monfalcone, Italy, and entered service in October 2019.
The Royal class is Princess's big-ship platform of the 2010s: roughly 145,000 GT, about 3,660 guests at double occupancy, designed around a Piazza atrium, a large top-deck pool and film area, and the SeaWalk, a glass-bottomed walkway beyond the ship's side. Sky Princess is a late example, distinguished by two Sky Suites with what Princess promoted as the largest balconies at sea, and by her debut in two parts: European entry into service in October 2019, and a formal American naming in Florida that December.
Key specifications
The dataset records Sky Princess at IMO 9802396, 145,000 GT, 330.0 m in length, built by Fincantieri, with launch and maiden voyage both in 2019. That tonnage is the rounded figure. Fincantieri's own ship page gives the precise measured figure of 145,281 GT, a length overall of 330.0 m, a moulded beam of 38.4 m, a design draught of 8.49 m, a service speed of 21.9 knots and a maximum speed of 23.0 knots — the figures used in the rest of this guide, with the dataset's rounded tonnage retained in the spec box above.
Princess's fact sheet gives 3,660 guests at lower berths, 1,830 staterooms and a crew of 1,346; Fincantieri, counting differently, gives up to 4,610 guests and 5,800 persons maximum. Her machinery is diesel-electric: four Wärtsilä 46F sets totalling 62,400 kW, driving twin 18,000 kW propulsion motors. Her Monfalcone yard number, absent from the dataset, is 6268.
Design and construction
Sky Princess was ordered on 30 December 2015 and built at Monfalcone, the class's home yard; she was Fincantieri's seventeenth ship for Princess. Her keel was laid on 5 July 2018 and she was launched on 14 February 2019. Construction followed the class pattern, with the increments of a late member: the Sky Suites, an enlarged top deck, and the infrastructure for the OceanMedallion wearable. In practice it was a mature, low-risk build — proven Wärtsilä diesel-electric machinery, Lloyd's Register classification, interiors developed from three previous sisters.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
She was completed on 12 October 2019 and acquired by Princess on 15 October; her maiden voyage began on 20 October 2019 in the Mediterranean. Her formal naming came in December 2019 at Fort Lauderdale, where she was sponsored by two women of NASA's pioneering generation: Kay Hire, a former naval officer and NASA astronaut, and Poppy Northcutt, the first woman to work in NASA's Mission Control — a pairing honouring women in aviation and spaceflight.
One detail of that ceremony is unsettled in the sources. Princess's own fact sheet dates the naming ceremony to 3 December 2019 and the US maiden voyage to 4 December, while the ship's Wikipedia history gives a christening date of 7 December 2019. This guide records the ceremony, the place and the sponsors, on which the sources agree, and flags the day rather than choosing between them.
Career by operator
Sky Princess has had one name and one operator.
| Period | Name | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| 2019–present | Sky Princess | Princess Cruises |
Her career divides at the pandemic: in service only a few months when the worldwide suspension of March 2020 stopped the Princess fleet, she returned as the industry restarted in 2021–22 and resumed the class pattern of seasonal worldwide deployment. No sale, transfer, renaming or lay-up specific to this hull is recorded, and she remains a front-line unit — the fourth of a six-ship class, before Princess moved on to the larger Sphere class.
Onboard character
The Royal class's character is Italianate and sociable. Its centre is the Piazza, a multi-deck atrium modelled on a European town square, ringed by cafés, bars and small venues and used as the ship's informal living room. Above it, the class's two signature gestures face outward: the SeaWalk, a glass-floored walkway cantilevered over the sea on the starboard side, and the large open top deck with its pools and the Movies Under the Stars screen.
Sky Princess's own contribution was at the top of the ship: two Sky Suites with exceptionally large balconies, marketed as the largest at sea. She was also an early MedallionClass ship, built around a wearable device replacing the cruise card for boarding, payment and door access. Piazza, glass walkway, outsized suites and wearable technology define the late-2010s Princess big ship: traditional in social layout, digital in operation.
Major refits and incidents
No transformative refit has been recorded for Sky Princess. Trade ship databases list a refurbishment in 2023, consistent with a first cycle of dry-dock maintenance and refresh for a ship delivered in 2019, but the detail of that work is not established in the primary sources used here. The defining interruption of her early career was not a refit or a casualty but the industry-wide pandemic suspension of 2020–21, which fell within her first year of service.
No major incident — fire, grounding, collision or disabling breakdown — is recorded for this hull in the sources consulted. Her record should not be padded with events belonging to other Royal-class ships or to the earlier, unrelated Sky Princess of 1988, which was a different vessel entirely (the former Fairsky), with a different history.
Sister ships and class
The Royal class, all from Monfalcone, comprises Royal Princess (2013), Regal Princess (2014), Majestic Princess (2017), Sky Princess (2019), Enchanted Princess (2021) and Discovery Princess (2022); P&O's Britannia (2015) is a close derivative. At about 145,000 GT it was Princess's largest class until the Sphere class (2024). Sky Princess is a repeat of her predecessors mechanically, delivered with the Sky Suites arrangement and full MedallionClass fit the later sisters also carried.
Fate and where she is now
Sky Princess remains in active service with Princess Cruises under her original name, as the dataset records, with no change of operator, sale or withdrawal announced for the hull. She is a mid-life big ship in a class that Princess continues to deploy worldwide, and her entry in this directory is the record of a design at its mature stage: launched, named by two pioneers of the space age, interrupted by a pandemic in her first year, and settled since into ordinary — which in cruising means global — service.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships; Fincantieri, "Sky Princess" ship page (145,281 GT, Monfalcone, delivered 2019), https://www.fincantieri.com/en/business/products/cruise-ships/Sky-Princess1; Princess Cruises, "Sky Princess Fact Sheet", https://www.princess.com/en-uk/news/backgrounders-and-fact-sheets/sky-princess-fact-sheet; Wikipedia, "Sky Princess (2019)" (history and characteristics), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_Princess_(2019)