Costa Concordia (Titanic 2012)

[Boomshanka]

Do mariners at this level not have to do similar 'crew resource management' training that airline pilots have to do?

 

[neale]

I am afraid that is a cultural issue. In the UK people are used to question everyone all the time. That is not only frowned upon in Italy but it can be also be severly punished. The consequence is that it happens only in extreme circumstances, especially where there is a clear hyerarchical structure.

Most men there will have served in the former compulsory armed forced service, which is where they will have learnt to their expenses to never question the authority and do as they are told.

Mental note:- Never fly with an Italian airline.

 

[mikefleetwood]

I wish people would stop trying to empathise with this thoroughly despicable captain.

We all know how a random wave can cause a ship to shudder and reverberate. The damage evident on the hull is orders of magnitude greater than a large wave slapping the hull, there is no way a seagoing marine pro could mistake the impact as a technical problem to be sorted out later in port.

Don't misunderstand me - all I was trying to do was attempt to see a rational reason for the captain's response to the GC, downplaying the severity of the situation.

 

[Observer]

I also would hope that there will be evidence that his close approach was questioned by the officers, or they may as well not have been there, but the captain had the con, and rightly so. He no doubt uttered resounding confidence in his plan, so here we are.


Given that Fly-bys now appear to be frequent practice, at what point do the officers interfere with the authority of the captain?

They either do it beforehand , (ie being insubordinate, when the Captain has done nothing abnormal yet), or after its too late (putting yourself on the helm at a time when disaster is inevitable!) , or perhaps more reasonably afterwards, when you realise that the captain cannot cope with the consequences, which may well be the case.

It would take some time, apparently too much, to realise that he was not coping, and for officers to override the captain, but they spent some of that investigating the position at a time when the captain should have coped.

As I understand (no direct knowledge but picked up from various sources) commercial airliners have a captain who is nominally "in command" at all times. However, in flight (or taxying) there is a "pilot flying" (who could be Captain or First Officer) and the other is "check pilot". I undertand that the check pilot can (in fact is mandated to) intervene and take control from the PF if he considers it necessary to do so for the safety of the flight, by simply stating "I have control".

 

[chewi]

As I understand (no direct knowledge but picked up from various sources) commercial airliners have a captain who is nominally "in command" at all times. However, in flight (or taxying) there is a "pilot flying" (who could be Captain or First Officer) and the other is "check pilot". I undertand that the check pilot can (in fact is mandated to) intervene and take control from the PF if he considers it necessary to do so for the safety of the flight, by simply stating "I have control".

That sounds like a good arrangement, and it rightly demands a very professional attitude from both pilots, but does that procedure cope with a planned Fly-by that the "pilot flying" takes too close, such that at a critical, perhaps dangerous point the "check pilot" is obliged to take over? I imagine that to be out of scope!

I would say it was there to prevent any contemplation of the flyby in the first instance, but these have been tacitly condoned and undertaken not only by the captain, but also seemingly by Costa, so to intervene prematurely would be a tricky career move for any officer.

 

[Sailfree]

That sounds like a good arrangement, and it rightly demands a very professional attitude from both pilots, but does that procedure cope with a planned Fly-by that the "pilot flying" takes too close, such that at a critical, perhaps dangerous point the "check pilot" is obliged to take over? I imagine that to be out of scope!

I would say it was there to prevent any contemplation of the flyby in the first instance, but these have been tacitly condoned and undertaken not only by the captain, but also seemingly by Costa, so to intervene prematurely would be a tricky career move for any officer.

I agree - I started a seperate thread to discuss this difficult issues under "Captains Decisions"

 

[rudolph_hart]

It's good to have the knowledgeable views of a master mariner. I wonder how much passage plans are kept to in practice and how rigidly they are followed. If deviations are routinely tolerated or even encouraged by the company, as seems to be the case, then the situation is rather different from what is being portrayed.

And not just Italian cruise ships: I have seen sizeable (5,000 teu?) MSC container ships in the Bay of Naples divert close inshore at Sorrento, with lots of hooting and flashing on/off of deck lights at night (sometimes with responding flashing of terrace lighting by one of the cliff hotels).

They sailed through the cruise ship anchorage area close to Sorrento itself (so no depth problems?). However, they did pass quite close to a promontary between Sorrento and Castellamare (possible rocky outcrops?).

Maybe these off-passage plan "Ciao, mama!" drive-pasts are just a routine, accepted Italian thing.

 

[Kukri]

Do mariners at this level not have to do similar 'crew resource management' training that airline pilots have to do?

Broadly speaking, yes.

 

[Kukri]

I am afraid that is a cultural issue. In the UK people are used to question everyone all the time. That is not only frowned upon in Italy but it can be also be severly punished. The consequence is that it happens only in extreme circumstances, especially where there is a clear hyerarchical structure.

Most men there will have served in the former compulsory armed forced service, which is where they will have learnt to their expenses to never question the authority and do as they are told.

Applies also to Koreans and Chinese in my experience. No doubt to others too. Indeed, a Korean airline changed the language used in the cockpit from Korean to English because there is no way to question a superior in Korean. This also applies in Chinese (don't start me...)

 

[alant]

As I understand (no direct knowledge but picked up from various sources) commercial airliners have a captain who is nominally "in command" at all times. However, in flight (or taxying) there is a "pilot flying" (who could be Captain or First Officer) and the other is "check pilot". I undertand that the check pilot can (in fact is mandated to) intervene and take control from the PF if he considers it necessary to do so for the safety of the flight, by simply stating "I have control".

Any airplane pilot has an obvious self interest, compared to most ship 'captains', since they would certainly be amongst the casualties if they crashed.

 

[Observer]

That sounds like a good arrangement, and it rightly demands a very professional attitude from both pilots, but does that procedure cope with a planned Fly-by that the "pilot flying" takes too close, such that at a critical, perhaps dangerous point the "check pilot" is obliged to take over? I imagine that to be out of scope!

I would say it was there to prevent any contemplation of the flyby in the first instance, but these have been tacitly condoned and undertaken not only by the captain, but also seemingly by Costa, so to intervene prematurely would be a tricky career move for any officer.

There is a well-respected method of accident analysis used in aircraft accident analysis called "Why because analysis" developed (I think) by a professor called Peter Ladkin at Bielefeld University.

http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/research/WBA/

I've read quite a number of his contributions regarding various aircraft accidents on the PPRuNe forums and found them thoughtful, highly analytical and mostly non-judgmental about pilot errors. However, there are cases, and I think this is one, where there is simply no possible argument to mitigate the failures of the pilot(s) in command. One example, I think, was the Turkish airlines crash at Schiphol, where all three pilots in the cockpit simply stopped flying the aeroplane (failed to montor airspeed, which - as I understand, I am not a pilot - is the #1 cardinal rule for flying). However, they were also let down by equipment malfunction (or dysfunction).

The aviation parallel to the CC case is a fully loaded A380 doing a flyby of a crew member's hometown at (say) 200 ft AGL and hitting the top of a hill the captain knew was there because he left it a bit late to climb out.

Applied to CC, I can't see that the "Why because analysis" would take very much to work out.

Q. Why did the ship sink?
A. Because it hit the rocks.
Q. Why did the ship hit the rocks?
A. Because it came too close to shore.
Q. Why did the ship come too close to shore?
A. Because the captain steered it there.
Q. Why did the captain steer it there?
A. Because he wanted to show off [for the benefit of a crew member/some reason(s) to be determined]

There's really nowhere else to go. That's why (at risk of being called an armchair commodore) I can't see any room for Schettino to be given any benefit of any doubt with regard to the actual strike. It simply doesn't exist. There's no room for any. It is possibly reasonable to hold back a bit on the post-strike actions, on which I have largely refrained from comment, except to observe that the undisputed and self-admitted fact that he was not last to leave the ship is in and of itself a dereliction of moral and (in Italy, as I understand) legal duty.

 

[Twister_Ken]

The aviation parallel to the CC case is a fully loaded A380 doing a flyby of a crew member's hometown at (say) 200 ft AGL and hitting the top of a hill the captain knew was there because he left it a bit late to climb out.

Didn't something like that happen to an Airbus at an airshow (Farnborough?) coz the driver hadn't left enough room for the engines to spool up again before beginning his climb?

edit. Not Farnborough, Mulhouse

 

[Boomshanka]

Didn't something like that happen to an Airbus at an airshow (Farnborough?) coz the driver hadn't left enough room for the engines to spool up again before beginning his climb?

Fly by wire probs I believe

 

[Kukri]

In some respects a good parallel. The requirement to have a formal passage plan before doing a "spot of tourism", which as I mentioned many pages back is actually in the Fleet Instructions of at least one major cruise line is based on the fact that there are situations that you can get into without being able to get out of them, just like the Airbus in the clip.

Those Fleet Instructions were written by a Master Mariner who is also a lawyer and began, "Should you elect to..." making it clear that the Company left "sightseeing" to the discretion of its Masters. They spell out that the passage plan must be in writing and charted and checked by the Senior First Officer and the Navigating Officer.

An example from sailing ship days would be getting embayed on a lee shore (still very possible in yachts!) and an example pertinent to cruise ships would be passing along a rocky shore line so close in that any attempt to go clear would swing the stern into the rocks.

Most such accidents become inevitable some time before they actually happen...

 

[paul.norton]

Fly by wire probs I believe

IIRC it was claimed at the time that the crash would be even more catastrophic if they had not being flying by wire.

I believe some of the safety features had been switched off for the demo and not enough time was allowed for the engines to spool up again.

 

[neale]

Any airplane pilot has an obvious self interest, compared to most ship 'captains', since they would certainly be amongst the casualties if they crashed.

Unfortunately that hasn't stopped it happening.

Ref: the Air Florida plane that ended up in the Potomac where the FO expressed his concerns but didn't force the issue or take any action.

The two were working under an old-fashioned airline protocol: The captain is not to be questioned, even if he appears to be taking a flight into danger.

As a result of Air Florida, the airline industry formalized a concept known as "crew resource management," which in practical terms means: if either pilot, but notably the co-pilot, spots trouble, he should voice it loudly.

Had Petit (1st officer) been more aggressive, he would have aborted the takeoff, with or without Wheaton's (Captain) permission, said Burnett, the former safety board chairman.

Once the plane was committed to the air, either pilot still could have prevented disaster if he had added power, Burnett said.

 

[chewi]

Fly by wire probs I believe

As I recall its flybywire was convinced by the attitude that it should be landing, so it did so in the trees.

 

[chewi]

Its an old story, but there's one of a software quality convention where delegates were asked:
" If you were told that the flight control software of the plane you were on was written by your team, which of you would have the confidence to stay on board?"

Only one declared he would, but his confidence lay in that he was sure it would never be able to take off.

Flybywire is not an excuse this captain can hide behind though.

(thread drift, back to The Concordia....)

 

[Kukri]

It's good to have the knowledgeable views of a master mariner. I wonder how much passage plans are kept to in practice and how rigidly they are followed. If deviations are routinely tolerated or even encouraged by the company, as seems to be the case, then the situation is rather different from what is being portrayed.

A formal passage plan should be adhered to, and any departure from it should be accounted for.

In this case, I suspect, but do not know, that there may not have been one, because if there had been one it would surely have involved a pre-determined safe distance off, and multiple means of position fixing - GPS, radar, with parallel indexing to determine cross track error, and an echosounder trace to make assurance doubly sure. In daylight one could add a distance off by vertical sextant angle au Lecky's Tables.

At least, a British ship would use parallel indexing - I was staggered a few years back to find that it was not taught in Norway... dunno if it is now - it was only invented in 1957 so one must allow them time to catch up...

 

[Boomshanka]

Its an old story, but there's one of a software quality convention where delegates were asked:
" If you were told that the flight control software of the plane you were on was written by your team, which of you would have the confidence to stay on board?

One man declared he would, but his confidence lay in that he was sure it would never be able to take off.

Flybywire is not an excuse this captain can hide behind though.

(thread drift, back to The Concordia....)

Maybe a ship with 10x a 747 Px onboard should be flybywire where the computer takes over if the numpty captain goes outside the envelope and is lining things up for a catastrophe