Just Cruises Plus

Virtually everyone is aware of the grounding and capsizing of the Costa Concordia and the total vilification of the captain of the ship.  We know that the ship had every modern aid to navigation and was equipped with more than enough lifeboats and life rafts.  So why did the ship impale itself on the rocky coast of Giglio Island and why did people die?

From all of the information available from the news media, it would appear that a hubristic captain and a less-than vigilant company combined to cause the destruction of the Concordia and the resultant loss of life. It appears then that the captain made the decision to steer the ship toward disaster despite having all of the information that he needed to avoid tearing the bottom out of his ship.  It appears that he chose to ignore the information that would easily have brought the ship onto a safe course.

We know that the ship has a “black box”.  Does Costa Cruises have someone who reviews each sailing to determine whether this or any other captain makes risky navigational decisions? 

What about the deaths?  No passengers should have died in this incident.  There were plenty of lifeboats and life rafts.  However, there was no leadership and very lax training as evidenced by how long it took to get people into boats.  Training is clearly the responsibility of Costa Cruises.  While the captain appears to have made major errors of judgment, we believe that Costa must bear an equal part of the blame in that abandon ship procedures were woefully inadequate.

Just Cruise Plus has not booked a client on any Costa ship since 2005.  We stopped recommending their ships as a result of customer feedback.

We have always believed that cruising was an extremely safe way of seeing the world at great comfort and convenience and we urge all of the cruise lines to review their safety policies to make certain that this kind of event never occurs again.