The aftermath of the Costa Concordia Disaster. Photo property of the Associated Press

According to the New York Times, the stock for Carnival Corporation, the Miami-based parent company of the Costa Concordia, has dropped nearly a fifth in the last week.  While the image of the $450 million boat listed on its side is more than enough to send investors into a panic, the details of the disaster have exposed a troubling lack of oversight in the cruise line industry.

As the industry has grown, cruise line companies have continued to develop and operate under their own regulations and standards. This includes the training and safety procedures for crew members and the amount of discretion a captain has to alter routes. Both of these issues played a critical role in the recent disaster.

“There are legitimate questions as these vessels have substantially evolved in recent years” said Helen Kearns, a spokeswoman for the European Union transportation commissioner. “The way these vessels have grown in size does mean finding the right balance to make sure regulations are stringent enough to ensure there are procedures like safe evacuations.”

The disaster was allegedly caused by ship captain Francesco Schettino’s decision to veer from a set course to show off his boat to Gilgio Island. The ship struck a reef as it approached the island and punctured the starboard side of its hull, causing it to take on enough water to eventually list on its side. Unlike the airline industry, where pilots are guided by controllers on the ground and follow precise computerized routes to their destination, cruise line captains are in complete control of their vessels.

Schettino’s boss, Pier Luigi Foschi of of Costa Crociere S.p.A., claims a safe route was programmed into the ship’s navigation computers and any deviation would have set off alarms.

Rescue operation have been postponed after sensors aboard the ship picked up movement

“The route was put in correctly,” Foschi said. “The fact that it left from this course is due solely to a maneuver by the commander that was unapproved, unauthorized and unknown to Costa.”

Foschi also acknowledged that the ship did a similar deviation last summer with the company’s approval.  Shettino is currently under house arrest as Italian authorities contemplate charging the 52-year-old with manslaughter and abandonment. More damning evidence against the captain emerged this week after a cook claimed the captain ordered dinner nearly an hour after the collision.

According to survivors of the wreck, the captain’s behavior after the collision was a microcosm of the rest of his staff. Many survivors have blamed the crew’s delayed and unorganized response to the catastrophe for the panic that ensued once the ship began to tilt on its side.

“The staff, you know, they seemed younger than me. They did not know what to do. They got on the lifeboats. They could not even drive the lifeboat,” said Justin Evans of Atlanta.

Added Georgia Ananias of California, “Not one person from the ship assisted us in any matter. There wasn’t one officer. We got on a lifeboat that wouldn’t function. We were all thrown out of the lifeboat and thrown against the walls of the ship.”

In today’s age of advanced navigation technology, catastrophes like the Costa Concordia are not supposed to happen. Clearly, captain Schettino has become the scapegoat for the whole ordeal, and given his reckless decision he certainly deserves much of the blame. But the accident could have been avoided if the cruise line industry had effective regulations limiting the power of ship captains to alter routes. The industry should take a hard look at the regulations that govern airline pilots and adopt a similar set of protocol for ship captains.

This will be an expensive lesson for Carnival and the cruise line industry as a whole, and one can only hope that there is positive change to come out of it to avoid similar tragedies in the future.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a catastrophic accident,  please contact our office immediately for a free consultation. You can also learn more about GoldenbergLaw, PLLC by visiting our website.

For more information on the Costa Concordia disaster, please visit the following links:

New York Times Story on Cruise Line Regulation

CNN Story on the Suspension of Rescue Operations

Survivors Remarks to CNN