Star Cruises has pulled out of the NCL America project as of Dec. 19, 2008 pursuant to a previous agreement with NCL, which Star owns jointly with Apollo Management. According to an agreement from last year, NCL has made a payment to Star for the NCLA assets and will also distribute what it called the Aloha assets, comprising of the vessel now known as the Norwegian Sky and certain other assets related to the vessel. Distribution of the assets will take place in January.

Neither Star nor NCL issued any statement as to whether Star’s pull out of Hawaii will affect NLCA and/or the Norwegian Sky which is presently sailing short cruises from Miami.