Fishburn Hedges

16.01.2012 | (1 comment)

Amidst all the amazing stories and fallout from the wreck of the Costa Concordia, I have been wondering why the Costa’s owners were so keen to vilify Captain Francesco Schettino? 

Costa Cruises (the Italian arm of the London-listed Carnival Group) immediately sought to blame the captain, claiming he made “errors of judgement” sailing the Costa Concordia “too close to the shore” and added his judgement in handling the emergency appeared “to have not followed standard Costa procedures”. To someone who doesn’t know a lot about Italian legal procedures, the fact that Captain Schettino has also been charged with manslaughter added weight to these claims.

However, having read Richard William’s excellent book The Death of Ayton Senna, I’ve learned that charging people with manslaughter, as officials of the Williams F1 team discovered, is part of police procedure and comes at a far earlier stage in the investigation than in the UK or US.

By Monday morning Costa Cruises were backtracking a bit, saying they would support the Captain. Why?

One reason is his own media interview when he blamed a faulty navigation system. The other is the realisation that criticising the captain of one of your main cruise liners brings into question the quality of the people sailing your other liners.

Airlines learnt this long ago. Whenever there is a crash or near miss, they almost always praise the captain, as US Airlines did when one of its planes crashed into the Hudson River. They know that on a complex piece of machinery – like an aircraft or a cruise liner – the one bit they are ultimately responsible for is the crew. Navigation systems or landing gear are made by someone else and often maintained by a third party. Captains and navigators are employed and trained by the airline or cruise operator who cannot duck responsibility. To reassure people that it is safe to get back on the planes or ships, they have to reassure them they are in safe hands, which is what the airlines do and Costa Cruises didn’t.

The cruise industry has been shown to be naïve in many ways by this disaster. And communications is clearly one of them. 

Posted by Jason Nisse

on 18.01.2012

John Williams :-
Good analysis Jason; it highlights the dangerous first 24 hours of the news cycle in a crisis, where you are trying to establish a favourable narrative when you may have no idea of the truth; blaming the captain and the "reckless sail-by" story certainly filled a vaccum and deflected wider corporate criticism at first but at what long term cost to the reputation of cruising and Carnival?