Italian cruise line Costa Cruises unveiled new safety measures following the deadly grounding of its ship off Tuscany, saying it will now have real-time tracking of its ships’ routes and will impose limits on its captains’ absolute authority.
The measures seek to respond to many of the problems involved in the Costa Concordia disaster.
The ship rammed into a reef on January 13 after the captain veered off course in an apparent stunt and then capsized off the island of Giglio, killing 32 people.
Many passengers complained they hadn’t received safety evacuation training, even though they had boarded days before.
Costa says such training will now be provided before passengers even board and that a monitoring system will flag passengers who missed out and encourage them to take a make-up session.
Passengers also said the captain delayed the evacuation alarm for nearly an hour after the initial grounding until the ship was listing so perilously that lifeboats could not be lowered down.
Costa said new procedures stipulate that the captain is not the only one who issues orders.
Members of his team also take part in making decisions, particularly during special navigation procedures like pulling into port, Costa said.
For Costa Cruises, which last year carried 2.3 million passengers, it could hardly have come at a worse time, with the global economic crisis already making potential cruise customers nervous about their jobs and finances.
The company actually stopped marketing for a period but now says customers are flowing back.
“Despite the economic downturn and the impact on consumption Costa has bounced back and booking volumes are back to the same levels recorded this time last year,” Costa CEO and chairman Pier Luigi Foschi said.
The Concordia captain, Francesco Schettino, is under house arrest, accused of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship before all passengers had been evacuated. He is accused of taking the ship off its charted course to bring it closer to Giglio in an apparent flyby. He claims the reef he hit – identified on all tourist maps of Giglio – was not on his nautical charts.
Costa has said Mr Schettino’s route change was unknown to the company and unauthorised.
To ensure such a manoeuvre does not happen again, Costa said it was launching a fleet-wide monitoring system that allows the company to follow the routes of its vessels in real-time and pinpoint the exact location of each ship to detect any unexpected changes in course.
The measures were announced as Costa unveiled the latest addition to its fleet.
The 114,500-tonne Costa Fascinosa – with a capacity of 3,800 passengers – will make her inaugural cruise on Friday. It is a floating city with a shopping centre, five restaurants, 13 bars, casino rooms and more. An even bigger vessel, with 5,000 berths, should be ready in 2014 for a company that says bookings have recovered from the crisis.
The accident rocked the cruise liner industry, hitting bookings and raising concerns about the safety of the huge modern cruise ships that ply the seas with thousands of passengers onboard.