Costa Concordia (Titanic 2012)

[chewi]

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

And hand it over to another catastrophe, a course planned by a software team?
At least this way the captain is supposed to have his plan and can execute it, not cascade it into heaps of subroutines that one hopes will do what is best.

Remember the year2000 issues?As an Industrial Engineer I had to cure plenty of them in poorly written software before the millenium day came,and it was a real threat to our productivity, (but thankfully not to safety as far as I ever knew)

I saw plenty of instances of year 19100 instead of 2000, and leap year errors in the date.
It looks like a minor issue, but it depends on what you then do with the date... things can go very wrong.

 

[mikefleetwood]

....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.

With you all the way, but wavering at that last point! I understand he "fell" off the ship, so not exacly a deliberate action. I expect climbing back onboard would not have been a trivial action and severely hampered by the obvious requirement to give priority to the passengers decending the ladders.

 

[Seajet]

To continue the flying analogy just for a moment.

No experienced pilot will ever do an 'ad hoc' display, or alter one that is planned, usually very thoroughly.

At one time we had a new prototype fighter, a real world beater, and the project pilot on it was a very, very skilled Test Pilot.

He wrang the guts out of it, doing incredible displays including sustained -4G outside turns within the airfield with the wingtip 100' above the ground & tailslides.

Snag was, he was a 'driven man' and openly said every time he flew he had to do more.

One day in a display rehearsal he looped, then apparently threw in a roll on the way down, out of programme...he was still pulling trying to recover as the aircraft hit.

As Minn describes any 'fly-by' has to be planned, plotted & discussed; you just don't throw in a seat of the pants display with anything more than a tesco trolley.

 

[chewi]

With you all the way, but wavering at that last point! I understand he "fell" off the ship, so not exacly a deliberate action. I expect climbing back onboard would not have been a trivial action and severely hampered by the obvious requirement to give priority to the passengers decending the ladders.

Falling was a high likelihood in the circumstances, but falling into a lifraft was.. well..convenient shall we say?

 

[mikefleetwood]

Falling was a high likelihood in the circumstances, but falling into a lifraft was.. well..convenient shall we say?

Yes it was - if that's what happened (actually, I'd have thought falling from bridge level and landing in a "hard" lifeboat would be very unlucky!). I thought the "landing in a lifeboat" bit had been dismissed as a translation error?

 

[Erik C]

I was wondering, since all power was lost, could it be that some of the missing are trapped in the elevators?

 

[Kukri]

I was wondering, since all power was lost, could it be that some of the missing are trapped in the elevators?[/QUOTE

Highly likely - passengers are of course told NOT to use the lifts in an emergency - but I am sure the elevators will have been checked by now.

 

[chewi]

I was wondering, since all power was lost, could it be that some of the missing are trapped in the elevators?[/QUOTE

Highly likely - passengers are of course told NOT to use the lifts in an emergency - but I am sure the elevators will have been checked by now.

It wouldn't have been an emergency when they got in it. It never was an emergency, just a small technical problem, no worries, all is well.

 

[Kukri]

IIRC they "fail safe".

I would be more concerned about people trapped in cabins by furniture sliding against the door.

 

[toad_oftoadhall]

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.

Is there *really* a legal duty for the captain to be the last off an Italian ship? What is the wording?

Clearly if the law requires him to be last off then he is guilty since there are still 30 missing and he's not on board.

If the law says something less specific than 'captain must be last off' then maybe they need to decide at what point he left and how he left. That is not really clear at the moment.

Maybe his position became untennable when the ship fell on its side. Maybe he'd supervised the evacuation of everyone at muster points and all but a handful of people were off. Clearly at that point an assumption that everyone he could practically assist was off would have been reasonable. Perhaps he just lost all self control under the pressure? The truth is we don't know. The suggestion that he could have climbed back on once off, is IMHO crazy for the obvious reasons.

AFAIK there are three main accusations against this guy:

1) He deviated from course against company policy. - IMHO it will transpire that he was allowed to deviate from his course at will.

2) He hit an island killing 30 odd people, sinking a valuable ship and possible causing all manner of pollution. - IMHO he is bang to rights on this and if it's manslaughter in Italy to do so he will be found guilty.

3) He deserted the ship too early. - IMHO this is stull unclear. We don't know how many passengers were still on when he left and we don't know what the circumstances of his leaving were. We don't even know if he did desert the ship but in such a mental states as to have been of no use to the evacuation. I think we need a lot more information before making a judgement on this.

 

[Erik C]

IIRC they "fail safe".

I would be more concerned about people trapped in cabins by furniture sliding against the door.

She only developed a severe list after quite some time, you think people would still be in their cabins with all those alarms going off?

 

[toad_oftoadhall]

She only developed a severe list after quite some time, you think people would still be in their cabins with all those alarms going off?

Two Korean honeymooners were!

 

[chewi]

Two Korean honeymooners were!

I bet the earth moved for them!

 

[Seajet]

I have to say that in this case, for me the moral issue outweighs any letter of the law.

Clearly someone ( in fact a lot of qualified people ) needed to get ashore and co-ordinate from there, try to keep tabs on names & numbers accounted for, etc.

However, I would really like to think that if I was in this Captains' position, I'd stay on board where the danger was and get active, while sending the First Officer and others to work onshore; further, I'd also like to think I'd continue do that even if ordered ashore by CG or laws...

 

[maxi77]

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...

Ooh it's a very long time since I did that as blind pilotage officer on various black war canoes. I thought but it is so long ago I may be wrong that Parallel indexing only works with a noth up display and in many areas head up was the norm.

It is a bit like when we had a USN rider with us and he was very surprised and impressed by a method of contact plotting we used (peculiar to submarines as it was bearing only) and took the details back to the US to introduce the concept to the USN submarine force. Without a system for exchanging ideas they stay where they are.

 

[peterb]

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

But there was a similar accident at Farnborough when a Breguet Atlantique did a low downwind pass (I believe on one engine) and then climbed away in an area known to have considerable wind shear. It stalled and spun in. I remember trying to identify some of the stores that came away in the crash; fortunately they were all dummies.

 

[SailorBill]

In some respects a good parallel.

A better parallel would be this:

 

[Monique]

Salvage options...

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/17/graphic-salvaging-the-costa-concordia-cruise-liner/


Interesting ideas...

 

[Storyline]

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/17/graphic-salvaging-the-costa-concordia-cruise-liner/


Interesting ideas...

I cannot see that any cruise companies would offer cruises in her again. Hopefully the salvage team will be able to safely float her off to be disposed of somewhere.

 

[Observer]

Is there *really* a legal duty for the captain to be the last off an Italian ship? What is the wording?

Clearly if the law requires him to be last off then he is guilty since there are still 30 missing and he's not on board.

If the law says something less specific than 'captain must be last off' then maybe they need to decide at what point he left and how he left. That is not really clear at the moment.

Maybe his position became untennable when the ship fell on its side. Maybe he'd supervised the evacuation of everyone at muster points and all but a handful of people were off. Clearly at that point an assumption that everyone he could practically assist was off would have been reasonable. Perhaps he just lost all self control under the pressure? The truth is we don't know. The suggestion that he could have climbed back on once off, is IMHO crazy for the obvious reasons.

AFAIK there are three main accusations against this guy:

1) He deviated from course against company policy. - IMHO it will transpire that he was allowed to deviate from his course at will.

2) He hit an island killing 30 odd people, sinking a valuable ship and possible causing all manner of pollution. - IMHO he is bang to rights on this and if it's manslaughter in Italy to do so he will be found guilty.

3) He deserted the ship too early. - IMHO this is stull unclear. We don't know how many passengers were still on when he left and we don't know what the circumstances of his leaving were. We don't even know if he did desert the ship but in such a mental states as to have been of no use to the evacuation. I think we need a lot more information before making a judgement on this.

I think the info re legal duty appears further up this thread from an Italian resident forumite (Mapism or Metabarca?).

It may be somewhat unfair to judge him harshly on his post-abandon ship actions. Quite possibly overwhelmed by guilt already by then and in no fit state for anything much.

However this is overwhelmed by responsibility for being there in the first place.

Re your charges 1, 2 and 3:

On 1 - I think a skipper may expect some latitude here. There is a arguable case that a flyby at a safe distance is good PR / advertising. But obviously only if done safely with proper planning which self evidently wasn't the case.

On 2 - well it's beyond argument.

On 3 - already covered