I don't think I have ever read so much horseshit in one article before!
the enormous cruise line industry, which operates without much regulation.
They have got to be f*****g joking! Flag state inspections and audits, port state inspections, classification society inspections and audits, statutory and monitored company internal audits...
While airline pilots are directed and guided by controllers on the ground, sea captains are considered to be in complete control. “It’s not like the aircraft industry, where you file a flight plan,” said Peter Wild, a cruise industry consultant at G. P. Wild (International) Limited
Airline pilots are guided by air traffic control in controlled airspace, had they looked a little further, ships are guided by vessel traffic systems (very similar to ATC) in areas of restricted navigation), as for the flight plans, no we don't use those, we don't f*****g fly, ours are called passage plans, although they are essentially the same thing, take a look at GP Wilde's website to see how qualified this guy is to comment on the supervision of the cruise industry.
Rather, at most cruise lines, company directors determine the routes, which are then transmitted to the captain and a navigating officer, who scrutinize the charted course but are meant to follow it.
Captain Schettino’s boss, Pier Luigi Foschi, insisted that a safe route had been programmed into the navigating computers and that alarms would have sounded for any deviation. “This route was put in correctly,” said Mr. Foschi, who is chairman of Costa Crociere S.p.A.
This is the best yet, company directors
may determine which ports the ships visit, they certainly do not determine the course and transmit it to the captain, and as for signori Foschi's comment, he is talking out of his ar*e, even if a course is plotted it can be deviated from (and often is for collision avoidance reasons) without alarms sounding, I do so hope that one of the things which comes out of this is a legal requirement to inform the company every time the ship deviates from the planned course, I would almost retrain as a deck officer just to be able to phone the managing director to inform him that we are altering course to avoid a tanker at 01:30 and then again at 02:12 to tell him about the alteration for the container ship and so on throughout the night.
It will be interesting to hear Costa / Carnival trying to defend some of the statements they have made over the last few days in court.
For many years, the global cruise line industry has operated under a loosely defined system that tends to escape scrutiny by courts and regulators. Cruise line instances of crime, pollution and safety and health violations have often gone unpoliced because no single authority is in charge
This loosely defined system which tends to escape scrutiny from regulators is known as the International Safety Management Code and is scrutinesed by a very strict series of audits and inspections.
A United Nations agency, the International Maritime Organization, oversees maritime safety through international conventions, including one for the Safety of Life at Sea, known as Solas, adopted in 1914, which grew out of the global anger that stemmed from the loss of the Titanic in 1912. But the agency has no policing powers.
No they pass laws which are ratified and policed by nation states in exactly the same way that happens in the airline industry.
I guess after any incident like this there will be a queue of clueless halfwits waiting to spout expert opinion.
