To plan all the itineraries for a major cruise line might sound like an exciting job –until something goes wrong and you have to reroute a large number of ships.

Itinerary planners at P&O Cruises experienced exactly this during the past few weeks. After the recent political upheaval in the Middle East and some North African countries, Libya started featuring on the radar screens as a potential source of problems.

After a lot of crystal ball gazing they have now decided to remove Tripoli from cruise schedules for this coming winter. This, of course, means a lot of re-scheduling will have to be done.

Adonia leaves for a 14-day Christmas cruise from Athens on the 20th December. She was to have docked at Tripoli on the 30th December, but this has now been replaced with a visit to Tunis on the 31st December. This means all other port visits had to be rescheduled. The planned visit to Jerusalem and Bethlehem on Christmas Eve has been moved to an earlier date.

Tripoli would have been the second port of call for Oriana on her world cruise after leaving Southampton on the 5th January next year. Now she will call at Oporto before visiting Naples and Malta. From there she will sail to Cairo, Suez, Muscat and Dubai.

Oceania would have docked at Tripoli on the 3rd March 2012 while on a 24-day Eastern Mediterranean cruise holiday. She will now visit Alexandria instead.

According to P&O, Tripoli will be back on the cruise line’s itineraries the moment the political situation improves.