CostaSmurfette

I am a lawyer and a retired proscutor. As I've said before, there is already enough uncontravertable public information to find Schitino guilty in the court of public opinion and condemn him to a life of being reviled, scorned and dispised by the public wherever and whenever he is encountered.

Ah but you see....the public arena is usually biased, relatively unknowledgable when it comes to maritime law (specifically Italian maritime law)...so the public hang 'em high rhetoric really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

You are speaking from your heart, not your legal training...its obvious that the hang 'em high syndrome is an emotional expression of your fury that a ship ANY ship got into trouble so soon after Sea Diamond in 2007 when the world and his wife begged that it never happened again.

Take away the emotive issues and you know as much as the rest of us do...bugger all.

To speculate is part of human nature, to insult is also part of human nature....and to hang 'em high is sometimes human nature too, we all need someone to blame when things get cocked up, especially when people die in the process....it's a natural emotional response...its human.

However.....since no-one here on the internet can say with any measure of surety that Francesco Schettino is absolutely 100% guilty of anything apart from being a human who may or may not have contributed to a tragic loss of life, no-one on the internet can hang 'im or anyone else high....just yet, anyway.

And there lies the rub....you want your pound or two of flesh...any flesh will do, just so long as the flesh is ripe, raw and bloody. Nothing wrong in that but as a lawyer/ex prosecutor...you should know the old saying about innocent until PROVEN guilty.....yes, Schettino make a cock-up but he alone was not the only cause cos it is NEVER that easy, especially when you have technology and a vehicle/vessel in the mix.

Uniall...I notice that you have yet to sail with Costa Crociere, so by that I consider your thoughts about the accident as pure straw grasping and speculation.

Just as I am sure those who did not sail with RCI speculated and grasped at straws when Monarch of the Seas grounded off St Maarten in 1998...due, and I quote "a myriad of human performance deficiencies" along with navigational errors on the charts that did not show a buoy that marked the reef that she sat herself on whilst under the command of her Captain.

The Concordia accident was going to happen eventually, if not to Concordia it was going to be another ship under any one of a few hundred Captains. Afterall, in 2007 when Sea Diamond was lost off Thira with the deaths of 2 people, cries of "it must never happen again" rang out from all quarters...the captain was immediately thrown under the bus and blamed...only to be proven not his fault when the charts were inspected and found to be incorrect.

The cruise industry AS A WHOLE is complacent...just as the aviation industry was before 9/11...oh we have had some close calls, near misses...but nothing too serious, no reason to tighten things up or make sure that the equipment used is right for the job or that people (humans that make cock-ups sometimes) are trained enough.

When humans can be trained not to make mistakes, a safer world we will live in....or maybe not since the computer in a robot has o be programmed by a human...darn it...you see...that totally impossibly unfluffable human being is in the equation yet again....

It's no good Uniall....while humans walk this earth of ours...MISTAKES will always be made by someone, somewhere...the important issue is not so much the mistake but whether we actually learn from it, thus preventing the same mistake happening again....crack that code and we can all become superhumans ;)

Captain Schitino intentionally put the ship in a zone of danger because he wanted to impress others and he was getting big kicks out of it and people died.

 

There is already enough evidence adduced to show that Captain Schitino can not be trusted with the safety of passengers, crew or vessel. He has proven himself to be a menace to all around him.

 

Just because some people might have subconcious death wish is no reason to subject the general public to ever again having Schitino in any maritime decision making position.

Whatever you personally feel about him, please have the decency and courtesy to spell his name correctly.

No-one, not even you, have the 100% facts as to what happened that night...only those directly involved and those who are officially investigating the tragedy know them. Your speculation proves nothing and only extends the upset to those who lost loved ones...you are rubbing salt into a wound with your rhetoric and insults towards the crew as a whole, not just individuals therein.

If you were a lawyer and your client was being treated as you are treating Francesco Schettino, you would be the first to cry foul. You do not have to like a person to be respectful to them.

Rhetorical Questions

 

If there is sufficient information to charge a person with the crime pedaphelia, would you allow that person to take your child for a day in the park because he has not been convicted?

 

For that matter, would you allow him to take your child even if a jury found him not guilty?

To stay on subject to this thread....

Would I sail with Francesco Schettino on the bridge again...absolutely, no hesitation.

Have I sailed with him as an officer on the bridge in the past, absolutely.

To compare a paedophile to a human who made a mistake in judgement is completely unjustified. A paedophile doesn't abuse a child by mistake or by accident, they do it cos they want to, cos they get kicks from doing so.

Last week I saw a photo taken aboard Concordia the night before the accident, it was a family photo with Francesco Schettino stood in the middle.....the body language and facial expression of Francesco Schettino spoke volumes....he was visibly uncomfortable, unsure, his mind was somewhere completely different. I chatted with the husband in the photo and he said when he spoke to the Captain, he seemed nervous, as if something was wrong, very out of sorts all evening...and that was 24 hours prior to the accident. The ship had another power dropout that afternoon, a relatively short one, but the husband in the photo could tell that the Captain was deeply concerned about something.

Regardless as to what measure of blame is officially placed onto Francesco Schettino's shoulders will be, there is one thing that no-one seems to grasp here.

People behave in very peculiar ways when under pressure or stress.....and no amount of training can squash that behaviour for those who are said to be "in command".

That is why it disturbs me a great deal how people have seen fit to assassinate Francesco Schettino...yes he was highly trained for all eventualities...but, you can be the best trained individual in the world and still fall completely apart when caught in an emergency situation.

We all like to think we could handle every emergency, we HOPE that we could...but more often than not, its our brain and/or body that fails to follow orders and that is the human achilles heel...we are just human beings at the end of it and no matter what we try to do, sometimes it just ain't going to happen and we turn to jelly, the training flies right out the window and we end up a jibbering wreck.

Not a day goes by where Francesco won't be wishing he had done this or that differently, but he cannot change what happened, no matter how much he goes over it again and again in his mind. He screwed up somehow, and he panicked...he isn't the first and he surely won't be the last either....but he alone was not the only reason for what happened cos accidents are not that easy...as you well know, there are lots of aspects that the armchair experts have no clue about. If only it WAS so cut and dry...

The other day the media caught him out on a speedboat...well...good for him, it was something he needed to do...whether the world approves or not is neither here nor there, he needed to clear his head, to get outside into the fresh air and feel human again, if only for a couple hours.

It really depends on who Francesco was with on the boat, chances are he will have requested and received special dispensation to go off out for the day...it was probably his first real chance to relax since the accident....house arrest is no party, the walls close in on you just as they do when in jail....just cos you have the use of and access to all parts of your home and garden, doesn't make it any easier...if anything it's harder cos you have to adjust to not being able to step outside your own front door.

By saying that Francesco turned into a jibbering wreck when the accident happened is not feeling sorry for him or trying to excuse what actions he took, but I think people have lost sight of the basic fact that he is a human being and by virtue of that, he is as imperfect as the rest of us. Just cos he has been trained to the nines, mainly on simulators, does not mean that he is Superman...he breaks down and fluffs things just as we all do...none of us are immune to making mistakes.

On this thread, I personally find what some are saying repulsive and offensive...just as I did when aboard Costa Allegra in 2010 when certain fellow passengers held the English speaking hostess hostage, demanding to see the Captain regarding the tender that sank with all hands at least a dozen times off Hurghada....it didn't sink, nor was it in any danger of doing so, but to hear these grown men berating the young crewmember like they did was frankly a disgrace....and yes they were British passengers acting like thugs.

People need to step back sometimes and listen to themselves or read what they have typed and ask themselves was it really justified when they are not in that person's shoes (nor will they ever be)...and try and see things from the opposite point of view, putting themselves into the shoes of the person they are baying for blood from, especially when they do not have 100% of the facts.

In relation to the webcam leaving the island....I believe the people of Giglio just want their lives back...and who can blame them, afterall, they have been front page news for almost 7 months, it has to get wearing after a time.

I seriously doubt there is any subterfuge or conspiracy going on...the island's own webcams still show the ship, so that pretty much cancels out any conspiracy theory about wanting to hide things, doesn't it?

Anyone wih a consiracy theory should place themselves in the shoes of those who live there and who have looked out of their windows and seen the hull sat there day in, day out....they want their lives back (not to mention their privacy).

Oh and to correct an entry a few pages back in this thread....

Costa Crociere, Iberocruceros & AIDA have their flag registry in Genova, Italy and not Panama as stated in this thread. Carnival Cruise Lines register their ships in Panama, exception to that is Carnival Spirit which is registered in Malta.

Therefore, Concordia worked to the Italian regulations and as such the ship and it's crew fall entirely under the Italian judiciary system and the Italian investigative authorities with NTSB, MAIB etc invites to oversee, learn information and share expertise & discussion. Just as with Carnival Splendor, the Panamanians took primary investigative position with invited "guests" the NTSB et al when her engine controlroom suffered the fire a few years ago off Mexico.

Those of you wanting a quick resolution to the "blame game" should consider the aviation industry, which has a very similar setup to accident investigation procedures to the shipping industry.

When the Concorde crashed at Paris Orly in 2000, it was some 4 years before a report was finalised and released...then a further 6 years before any litigation reached the judiciary system. Concorde was far more "cut and dry" compared to Concordia, there were just two main nationalities involved, a French crew and mainly German/Swiss passengers who were flying to meet the cruise liner Deutschland in New York, the aircraft was on a special Deilmann charter flight at the time of the crash.

As someone who has studied air crashes in depth for over 35 years, I can honestly say that in all probability a preliminary report into Concordia might be released by the end of this year, however, the full report could take 2-3 years to compile and any litigation could take anything upto 5 years after the final report....the litigation will inevitably delay the compensation cases since the compensation cannot be settled until the definite causes of the accident have been agreed.

The snippets seen in the Italian media thusfar are not to be treated as official findings as they are literally snippets, often taken out of context....the Italian language is notoriously difficult to translate into English correctly and is frequently mistranslated and misunderstood.

I'll be glad when the hull has been removed and life can return to normal again....I doubt many of the people on Giglio will miss that hull or the frenzy surrounding it too.

I can see at least 4-8 of the below potential causes being cited.....

Human error by one and/or more personnel on the bridge.

An over-reliance on technology/instrumentation.

Inability or unwillingness to question orders or direction between officers & crew on the bridge.

Inaccuracy of paper charting (as proven in 2007 with Sea Diamond).

Unreliability of instrumentation by design flaw, technical breakdown and/or poor training in its usage.

Complacency throughout the cruise industry regarding the "it'll never happen to us" syndrome.

Potentially fatal design flaws in the construction, design and general day to day running of the vessel.

Another aspect that requires more than a cursory look is that of officers duty hours and if any member of the bridge crew were suffering from fatigue at the time of the accident.

Hours logging is something that must be done and mariners have a set number of hours that they must by law have off duty, these hours are logged, again by law, in the crew logbooks and usually on a laptop or other hardrive type device.

A couple of years ago a Captain and First Officer aboard a high end cruise ship (Silversea) were found to have falsified their duty hour entries, it was discovered during a routine inspection at a UK port and both were duly replaced by the cruise line and placed on administrative leave.

So this is another area that will inevitably go under the microscope, not just to make sure that all officers abided by the duty rules but to also see if any changes need to be made across the shipping industry as a whole in regard to the length of duty hours and the logging of each crewmember's duty time.

All the above have been suffered by the airline industry, all of which have cost thousands of lives, all of which were identified too late as potential problems on the flightdeck....the same problems have also been identified in shipping accidents but so far not acted upon industry wide, unlike in aviation where all have been accepted as failures in the safe running of aircraft.

Fincantieri design decent enough ships, the problem lies with the unit cost to the customer. Many of these ships are ordered years in advance of their construction and at a set price which is agreed with the customer when the contract to build is inked.

Steel costs will always be factored into the end unit price, along with a reasonable estimate of running costs (physics...weight/displacement = $ in fuel etc).

To build a full double bottom instead of the industry standard semi-full double bottom costs money...both in construction and running costs...plus it adds a certain amount of time to the actual time taken to build the ship. Look at Queen Elizabeth, a Vista 2 class, took 6 months from keel laying to fitting out & delivery.

It isn't Fincantieri at fault here, well not them alone, anyway. Over the last 10 years the cruise lines have had big fat orderbooks and they wanted their ships finished yesterday so that they could play the proverbial "biggest & best" game tween themselves.

The trouble is that when you build ships off the conveyerbelt, it can come with a price...a price that is often never factored into the finished article, that being the price of what happenes when everything goes wrong...enter Concordia and, to a lesser degree, Titanic.

Everything built has a redundancy factored into it...the problems lie where that redundancy is squeezed by using the same footprint and equipment but extending it without upgrading the grass root technology and machinery to handle that extention.

In the Concordia case, there are alot of variables to consider before making a definitive cause for the accident, it is completely unlikely (except in the media and in the imaginations of the armchair experts) that just one of the above causes was the primary cause or even the only cause.

The over reliance on technology, the unreliability of that technology, the paper charting found to be out of date, the inability for personnel to vocalise disquiet or question an action is well documented...as are cases of human error by one or more people, which in itself is combined with the inability to vocalise against another officer if one or more feel a decision was wrong for fear of being belittled or disbelieved.

There are way too many factors and angles that have to be looked at and checked before anyone can come up with that definitive cause or causes. Francesco Schettino is a very small part of a much larger jigsaw picture that needs to be put together carefully and correctly...and that will inevitably take time to complete.

Hopefully the cruise industry - if not the entire shipping industry - will now act on these well known and documented failures so that accidents like Concordia can never ever happen again in the future.