Costa Concordia Grounding Brings More Safety Rules, Awareness

When the Costa Concordia was grounded off the coast of Italy last January, a call went out to take a focused look at cruise ship safety. Since then, a number of in-depth television specials have been aired, several accounts of the tragic event have been published and maritime experts have come up with specific suggestions. While there can be no guarantee of another event of such magnitude happening ever again, what looks to be a unified cruise industry has taken steps to minimize the chance.

“The cruise industry continues to work on a global level to improve the safety of passengers and crew, which is our number one priority,” said Christine Duffy, president and CEO of the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) in Travel Pulse.

Quick reality check: nice thought but no real meat there.

CLIA is a trade organization, not a governing body with legal authority granted by a nation or group of nations to impose or enforce anything. Most of their time is spent lobbying on behalf of the cruise industry, developing and implementing training and certification programs for travel agents and generally promoting the cruise industry.

There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, they do a good job doing what they do. But while new cruise industry policies address safety concerns brought up by the Costa Concordia grounding, travelers would do well to keep their eyes and ears open and be alert when traveling via cruise ship with the same diligence they might apply when traveling in the air or on land.

Still, the cruise industry has adopted every bit of the renewed sense of urgency about safety that we might expect.

“Since January of this year, and in keeping with our efforts to continuously improve operational excellence, the global cruise industry has voluntarily adopted seven wide-ranging safety policies,” added Duffy. “We remain fully committed to exploring further enhancements in a number of areas that will add to the industry’s excellent safety record.”

Previously, implemented policies for increased safety included a passage plan, much like an aircraft flight plan, to address the notion that the captain of Costa Concordia had gone off course on a whim. Access to a ship’s bridge was to be tightened up too, believing unauthorized people may have been hanging around the command center of Costa Concordia at the time of the tragic event. Cruise lines also decided to carry extra life jackets because some passengers on Costa Concordia were in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were needed.

Recently, a rule was added to actually fill lifeboats with people on a periodic basis, just to be sure the crew knew what to expect and do in case of a real emergency.

The meat of the new cruise ship policy:

“To facilitate training for lifeboat operations, CLIA oceangoing members have adopted a policy that at least one lifeboat on each ship is to be filled with crew members equal in number to its certified number of occupants at least every six months. Under this policy, for safety considerations, the loading of lifeboats for training purposes is to be performed only while the boat is waterborne and the boat should be lowered and raised with only the lifeboat crew on board.”

Standardization of operational cruise industry policies among cruise lines is surely a good idea. Lessons learned from the Costa Concordia grounding are producing rules like these from CLIA that will probably save lives in the long run too. Still, smart travelers stay alert, know safety rules and protocols in place for any mode of travel they engage and act responsibly in case of emergency.

See the CLIA website for the full text of their Life Boat Loading for Training Purposes Policy.




[Flickr photo by darkroom productions]

Cruise Ship Wreck Removal Underway Amid New Questions Of Cause

It’s been nearly seven months since the cruise ship Costa Concordia grounded off the coast of Italy, leaving 32 dead. After lying on its side since the January 13th grounding, Costa Concordia will next be stood back up, re-floated and towed to an Italian port. But what looks to be a simple operation will involve the coordination of several salvage companies and cost millions.

A big part of the salvage plan to remove the wreck calls for 30 watertight boxes, called cassions, to re-float the ship in one piece. Once the ship has been stabilized, caissons will be fixed to the upper side of the hull and gradually filled with water as part of the operation to right the ship.

Using a system of hydraulic jacks fixed to an undersea platform, the ship will be brought upright, underwater. When the ship is upright, caissons full of water also will be fixed to the other side of the hull. Then the caissons on both sides will be filled with air to re-float the wreck as we see in this simulation.


Salvage operations began with the removal of fuel from the ship to address environmental concerns. Once the wreck is removed, the focus goes back on to the seabed with a cleanup operation devised to conserve the marine environment. The preliminary stage is expected to finish by the end of July, followed by the ship stabilization phase in August.

Looking back, history will remember the Concordia event as more of a near miss than a Titanic-like disaster.

Looking forward, via an Operational Safety Review performed by the cruise industry, improved safety measures have been put in place to prevent an incident like this from happening again.

This week, new information revealed in an Associated Press report raises more questions. The black box stopped recording before the ship was evacuated. Watertight doors, designed to keep the ship afloat, were left open. Unauthorized maps were found in the bridge.

Did these new discoveries have something to do with the wreck? That is unknown at this time so stay tuned as this story continues.

[Flickr photo by EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection]

Sailing With Costa, Post-Concordia: A Review Of Costa’s Neo Romantica

Images of sinking ships aren’t normally the best advertisements for cruise lines, but after watching the Discovery Channel’s documentary on the ill-fated Costa Concordia, it made me want to book a cruise. And not just any cruise – a Costa cruise. Why?

I’ve traveled extensively in more than 50 countries over the last two decades on almost every imaginable mode of transport – cars, trains, ferries, planes and buses – but I haven’t been on a cruise since a family trip way back in 1985. I had a blast on that cruise but somehow in the intervening years, I acquired this fuzzy notion that cruises were for families, senior citizens and inexperienced travelers incapable of exploring on their own.

But after reading Pico Iyer’s convincing story, “Confessions of a Cruise Convert,” about the merits of cruising in Conde Naste, I resolved to give it a shot. With the Costa Concordia crash in January, and an engine room fire aboard the Costa Allegra in late February, it’s been a rough year for Costa. But while others were recoiling in horror while watching the NatGeo and Discovery documentaries on the Concordia this spring, I still wanted to check out Costa on my own.I checked Costa’s website and, sure enough, found some great deals. Prices for a seven-night cruise departing from Savona, Italy, aboard the recently renovated Neo Romantica started at just $399 for adults and $159 for children for a mid-April departure. The itinerary included stops in Barcelona, Palma di Mallorca, Valletta, Catania and Naples. I did the math and realized that we might spend more money on our own, staying in hotels, eating at restaurants and traveling by train around Italy.

I don’t take the safety issue lightly. Particularly because I’m traveling with my wife and two children, ages 2 and 4. But my parents have traveled with Costa before and had nothing but good experiences, and, in light of the Concordia fiasco, I guessed that there’s probably no safer time to travel on Costa than right now. What follows is a brief review of our experience on the Neo Romantica.

Safety. In the wake of the Concordia disaster, Costa now distributes red cards to each passenger that they have to turn in to prove they attended a security procedure briefing prior to departure. I had an opportunity to interview Salvatore Donato, the ship’s captain, and he was quite candid in discussing what went wrong on the Concordia.

“We are more than safe,” he said. “Safety for us first, before everything else. We all have families and want to go back home safely.”

Donato has been with Costa since 1990 and knows Captain Schettino, the Concordia’s captain who is now under house arrest and is facing criminal charges in Italy.

“We all know Schettino, and still, none of us can believe he would act as he did,” he said. “Every one of us, we are still asking ourselves, why, why. I think he lost his mind after the incident, not before. After he hit the rock, too much information arrived in his brain and the light switched off. The light switched off.”

During our cruise, we encountered some brisk winds and mildly inclement weather at times, but none of us ever felt seasick. In fact, the gentle swaying of the boat helped us sleep at night.

Moving past the Concordia. Our ship had a capacity of 1,800 and there were 927 passengers on board, with only 28 from English speaking countries. The majority of the ship’s passengers were from Italy, France, Germany and Switzerland, but we met people from around the world, and most seemed motivated by Costa’s prices. No one I spoke to was the least bit concerned about safety issues.

Jacomien Melis, a woman we met from The Netherlands, told us she booked her cruise before the Concordia sank, but didn’t think about canceling for a moment.

“You can crash at any time, doing anything,” she said. “Riding in a car, on a bus, on a plane.”

At the port in Savona, a family from Kelowna, British Colombia that had just completed a cruise on the Costa Atlantica told me that Costa sent them a letter after the Concordia disaster offering them the opportunity to cancel their cruise with a full refund, but they elected not to cancel and were happy they didn’t. They said their cruise had 1,600 passengers out of a capacity of 2,500.

Staterooms. The Neo Romantica was completely renovated in 2011, after a fire aboard the Romantica, and the ship was beautifully remodeled. I had an opportunity to check out a variety of cabins (see videos below) and I thought they were all quite smartly designed and furnished. The beds have memory foam mattresses, which are superbly comfortable, water pressure in the showers is excellent, and the rooms come equipped with brand new, 47-inch Samsung flat-panel TV’s. The toiletries they leave in the room are super high-end and the housekeepers leave ice and fresh water in the room every day.

Food. One of the advantages of choosing an Italian ship is the food, which we found to be almost uniformly excellent both in the main dining room and the buffet. Every evening, I looked forward to returning to our cabin, where we’d find that evening’s menu in our mailbox. I went a bit crazy, I have to admit. At most dinners, I ordered 1-2 appetizers, a cheese plate, 1-2 pastas, 1-2 entrees, gelato, plus another dessert, if I was feeling particularly gluttonous, which I usually was.

Our kids are extremely picky eaters, but the staff was willing to make them anything they wanted, within reason. The kids’ menus featured standards like hot dogs and chicken fingers but also gourmet items like braised leg of Spanish spring lamb and chicken Milanese.

As one would expect on an Italian ship, the pastas and gelato were outstanding. Potato gnocci, pumpkin ravioli and agnolotti with a Piedmont style meat sauce were a few of my favorites. The ship also has a pizzeria with Neapolitan style, wood-fire pizzas, at a cost of 7 euros for as much as you want.

Service. The mostly Filipino waiters and housekeepers are extremely friendly and outgoing. Diner in the dining room takes about 1.5 hours per night, a challenge for families with small children, but that’s what you get when you order 5-10 courses per night, as we did. If we ate more modestly, it wouldn’t have taken so long.

Ports. For me, Malta was a highlight, so I was happy we had a full day in Valletta. We also had a full day in Palma, which I was lukewarm on, and half days in Barcelona, Catania and Naples. If you don’t take the ship’s excursions, it’s hard to go very far from the port in Catania and Naples on your own without worrying you’ll miss the departure.

Entertainment. The floorshows weren’t my cup of tea but they had a few musicians that I loved – a classical ensemble, a flamenco guitarist and a blues/folk singer from Poland.

Room for Improvement. Internet access is an issue on most cruise lines and I found the speed on the Neo Romantica to be hit or miss. At times, it was quite good and other times it was practically unusable. If you buy access in three-hour increments, it costs 8 euros per hour, which isn’t bad by industry standards.

The only other issues I had with the ship probably come down to its size and concept. The Neo Romantica is Costa’s smallest ship, and that has both plusses and minuses. We found out after booking that the Neo Romantica is probably the least kid-oriented ship in the fleet, and indeed, there isn’t a lot for kids to do on board. They have a kids’ club, but it’s only open to children age 3 and up. We have a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old who’s almost 3. I’m told that the best Costa ships for kids are the Costa Favolosa and the Costa Fascinosa.

Conclusion. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the Neo Romantica but it’s probably best suited for families with older children, couples and seniors. If you’re looking for a nicely renovated ship, with quality staterooms, great food and an interesting itinerary at great prices, it’s probably a great option for you.

[All photos and videos by Dave Seminara]

Grounding Of Costa Concordia Brings New Rules For Cruise Travel

After the grounding of Costa Concordia in January, the governing organizations of the cruise industry ordered an Operational Safety Review both in response to the troubling Concordia grounding and as part of the industry’s continuous efforts to review and improve safety measures. Now, the review is complete and has resulted in three new policies that promise to address safety concerns.

These three new policies, which go beyond international regulatory requirements, address safety issues related to passage planning, personnel access to the bridge and lifejackets. Each of these three policies will be reported to the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization (IMO) for consideration at their next session in May.

“As highlighted by these wide-ranging policies, we continue to take proactive measures to improve the safety of passengers and crew across the globe,” said Christine Duffy, president and CEO of the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) in a Wall Street Journal statement.

The three policies answer questions asked about specific topics concerning the Costa Concordia grounding:

Passage Planning – The topic of “passage planning” came up concerning reports that the captain of Costa Concordia had chosen to take the ship off course as a salute, a show of respect, for a retired captain that lived ashore.

Under the new policy each passage plan is to be thoroughly briefed to all bridge team members well in advance of its implementation and it is to be drafted by a designated officer and approved by the master.

Personnel Access To The Bridge – At one point in the investigation of the Costa Concordia grounding, it was believed that unauthorized personnel were on the navigational bridge at the time of the incident.

To minimize unnecessary disruptions and distractions on the bridge, the new policy states that bridge access is to be limited to those with operational functions during any period of restricted maneuvering or when increased vigilance is required.

Lifejackets – Although there were plenty of lifejackets on board Costa Concordia, the nature of the accident caused some passengers and crew members to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and not have one.

Under the new rule, in addition to the statutory requirement of carriage of lifejackets for each person onboard, cruise lines have adopted a policy of carrying additional adult lifejackets.

The number of additional adult lifejackets to be provided must not be less than the total number of persons berthed within the ship’s most populated main vertical fire zone. This ensures that the number of lifejackets carried is far in excess of the number of persons actually onboard the ship.

These three rules are in addition to a new emergency drill policy requiring mandatory muster for embarking passengers prior to departure from port. That new policy was released previously and also consistent with the industry’s announcement January 27 of a complete safety review in response to the Concordia grounding and as part of the industry’s continuous efforts to review and improve safety measures.

The Cruise Lines International Association, European Cruise Council, and the Passenger Shipping Association put forward the new policy with the support of their member cruise lines.

Under the new muster policy:

  • A mandatory muster of all embarking passengers will happen prior to departure from port.
  • Late arriving passengers will be promptly provided with individual or group safety briefings that meet the requirements for musters applicable under the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS).
  • The policy is designed to help ensure that any mandatory musters or briefings are conducted for the benefit of all newly embarked passengers at the earliest practical opportunity.

The Cruise Industry Operational Safety Review also included a comprehensive assessment of the critical human factors and operational aspects of maritime safety. The industry’s efforts also are consistent with the framework and spirit of the International Safety Management Code.

“We look forward to working collaboratively to identify any additional operational issues that will achieve our longstanding goal of continuous improvement and innovation in shipboard operations and safety,” added Duffy.

[Flickr photo by darkroom productions]

The Titanic Chronicles: 100 Years Ago Today

The story of RMS Titanic, immortalized by the 1997 James Cameron film of the same name, is a lasting one. Bringing the story to theaters in a blockbuster hit, enhanced and re-released this month, gave the story life long after so many had died at sea. Now, footage of recent maritime events, including the grounding of Costa Concordia and fires aboard other ships, brought home a realism no film could match. Still, the fate of Titanic still holds as the worst maritime disaster ever, one that occurred on this day, 100 years ago.

11:40 p.m. on April 15, 1912 was a Sunday and the maiden voyage of RMS Titanic was well underway. Earlier in the day, radio messages received warned of icebergs in the ship’s path but were ignored. That night, a lookout cried “Iceberg, right ahead!” but the ship could not avoid a collision. That iceberg ran down the right side of the ship causing fatal damage to what was believed to be an unsinkable vessel.

Just after Midnight, the ship’s captain ordered lifeboats into the water in what had to be his most difficult decision ever.

Still today, the Captain is referred to as the Master of the Vessel. Still today, he or she has a great many lives to be responsible for. In January, it was Captain Francisco Schettino who gave the abandon ship order for Costa Concordia.

In April of 1912, it was Captain Edward J. Smith as the master of Titanic who was fully aware of the iceberg warnings that had been received via radio days before the tragedy. To insure safety, even back then, Smith charted a new course, slightly south of the original plan, to avoid icebergs.But radio was a new thing then and the focus was on relaying messages sent to and from the ship by passengers or those on land. Earlier in the day of that fateful night in 1912 – 100 years ago today – Titanic had received a message from the steamer Amerika warning of icebergs directly in the path of the ship. Later, another message of iceberg danger was received too. Both went unheeded as radio operators worked to send and receive more important passenger messages.

Today’s cruise ship Captains regularly alter courses too, commonly in response to changing weather conditions. When a crime occurs involving passengers or the crew, the captain, as master of the vessel, is responsible for those people as well and works closely with the US Coast Guard, US Customs and Border Patrol and other agencies to insure a swift and just resolution.

Not long ago, evidence indicated that Captain Francisco Schettino altered the course of Costa Concordia, coming too close to shore and causing the tragedy that followed. The event caused cruise industry leaders to reaffirm their commitment to safety.

Officers and crew members from Royal Caribbean, along with sister-brands Celebrity and Azamara Cruises, now have the advantage of being a part of new simulator training center at Resolve Maritime Academy in Fort Lauderdale. Signaling a renewed focus on safety, staff of the $6.5 million facility cut the grand opening ribbon recently as part of an ongoing safety program but timing surely looked to address current concerns of the cruising public.

“This was not a knee-jerk reaction to recent events,” Captain William Wright, senior vice president of marine operations for Royal Caribbean International and Azamara Club Cruises said of the two year process to get the facility to opening day.

Still, while simulations can take into account a variety of factors that can go wrong, staff members at the Resolve training facility quickly note that it is the human element that can often make the difference in avoiding disaster at sea.



Fiction: The Titanic being raised out of the Atlantic.

[Flickr photo by mecookie]