Two passengers were left stranded at an Italian port after they arrived too late and their cruise ship started to leave without them.
The pair were due to embark on a nine-day cruise on the MSC Splendida around the Mediterranean, starting in Bari, Italy, on August 15, MailOnline reported.
But a TikTok video shows the couple frantically waving and pleading with the crew to wait for them. The gangway had already been removed, it appeared, with the ship set to sail.
"Is the captain there, please?" the man shouts in Italian in the video. "Captain, wait for us, please. You can do it if you want to," he adds.
But it was to no avail.
"The cruise didn't leave even a minute over time. We felt there was little to no effort to find those people whether they were there or not," one passenger told MailOnline.
According to the MSC Cruises website, "check-in closes two hours before the ship is due to depart in all embarkation ports."
Ugo Patroni Griffi, president of the Port System Authority of the southern Adriatic Sea, told Italy's La Repubblica newspaper the couple "tried to ask the ship to turn back or at least to stop operations. Obviously, this is impossible for cruise ships that have time constraints and that are very expensive operations."
MSC Cruises did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, made outside of normal working hours.
