Iona
P&O Cruises · Cruise · In service · built by Meyer Werft
Iona arrived in 2021 as the first LNG-powered cruise ship built for a British line, with a glass SkyDome over the midships pool.
Derived metrics
Computed by ships.fyi from the core specification — see how we calculate these.
How big is it, really?
The Iona's length overall, against things you already know the size of.
The 747-8 held the longest-airliner record for over a decade, until Boeing's 777-9 took it by about 19 inches (76.72 m) — our sibling site aircraft.fyi measures everything that flies the same way.
One Iona = 1.28 Titanics · 3.3 football pitches · 14 blue whales · 4.5 Boeing 747-8s laid end to end.
Plan a sailing on Iona
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The numbers
| Length overall | ≈344.5 m |
|---|---|
| Beam | ≈42 m |
| Gross tonnage | ≈184,089 GT |
| Passengers | ≈5,200 (max) |
| Crew | ≈1,800 |
| Decks | 17 passenger decks |
| Propulsion | LNG dual-fuel |
| Entered service | August 2021 |
Put the Iona next to something
Last verified: 2026-07-15 · Spot an error? business@luck.fyi
What makes it different
Iona was the largest cruise ship ever built for the British market when she entered service, and P&O's first on LNG — a jump of about 40,000 gross tons over Britannia, which had been the flagship six years earlier.
The design problem she answers is weather. P&O sails almost everything out of Southampton, including Norwegian fjord itineraries where an open pool deck is unusable for much of the voyage. The SkyDome puts a glass roof over the midships pool, keeping it usable in the North Sea and converting to an aerial performance venue after dark.
Her introduction was delayed by more than a year — she was completed in 2020 and could not be named until August 2021, when she was finally christened at Southampton. She shares the Excel platform with Arvia, and with Carnival, AIDA and Costa ships built on the same hull, which is how a British brand ended up with a German-built ship on an Italian-designed platform.
The Iona line
Excel class
The SkyDome
Who operates the Iona
All 1 operator of record, verified 2026-07-15. Figures marked ≈ are approximate.
POP&O CruisesNorwegian fjords and Northern Europe in summer, Canaries and Mediterranean in winter, all from Southampton.1✓→