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901
Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: January 23, 2012, 04:17:55 AM »
"The suggestion of clandestine passengers raises the possibility that either a crew member or a passenger smuggled a friend on board the ship. Passengers might have been invited on board by a crew member at the last minute," said Francesca Maffini, Gabrielli's spokesman.

Another possibility is that some crew members were not registered properly because they were working on the ship illegally. Many of the crew were from India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines."

http://www.theprovince.com/Firm+encouraged+sailpasts+Costa+captain+insists/6036349/story.html

The company, Costa Cruises, a division of Carnival Cruise Lines, denied Sunday that any unregistered passengers would have been on the ship and that it had condoned the close approach to this Tuscan resort island, where the 950-foot ship struck a rock on Jan. 13.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/costa-concordia-may-have-had-unregistered-passengers/articleshow/11599372.cms


902
Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: January 23, 2012, 04:08:57 AM »
"Among other details that emerged from the transcripts, the captain said that the single-engine wooden lifeboat he was piloting to bring passengers ashore might have hit a few people's heads.

"It might also be that some people's heads were broken," he said, explaining that the boats were not easy to maneuver.

Schettino also said that the first person to die in connection with the shipwreck was a French passenger who had a heart attack soon after the ship ran aground."

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/costa-concordia-may-have-had-unregistered-passengers/articleshow/11599372.cms

903
Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: January 22, 2012, 07:58:03 PM »
"In the newspaper interview he (Schettino) gave last year, he was asked about what impact the sinking of the Titanic had on perceptions of ship safety at the time.

He said: ''Luckily, people quickly forget tragedies.''

http://www.smh.com.au/world/drama-on-the-decks-20120120-1qa4f.html





904
Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: January 22, 2012, 07:48:37 PM »

905
Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: January 22, 2012, 07:20:23 PM »
"Italian prosecutors are hunting for the laptop Capt. Francesco Schettino took with him when he abandoned his sinking luxury liner and slipped to a mystery blonde moments before he was arrested, Italian newspapers reported.

La Repubblica said Sunday prosecutors are especially hot to find the laptop “given the haste with which it changed hands.”

The paper said prosecutors had identified the woman as a lawyer, but that it was unclear if she was working for the cruise line or not.

Witnesses said Schettino had the laptop in a colorful plastic bag when he says he “tripped into a lifeboat” and fled the Costa Concordia after running the luxury liner onto rocks off the Tuscan coast Jan. 13, killing at least 30 people.

He claims the voice data recorder quit recording conversations that would show that higher ups had asked him to sail close to the island of Giglio as a form of swaggering “advertising” for the cruise line, La Repubblica reported.

“The Giglio salute on January 13 was planned with the company before we departed from Civitavecchia,” he said, according to excerpts from his 135-page statement leaked to the Italian press and published Sunday.

“We had meant to do it the week before, but it was not possible because of bad weather,” he said. “They insisted. They said, ‘We can be seen and we can get some publicity.’ So I said ‘okay.’”

Cruise line Costa Crociere, a subsidiary of Carnival Cruise Lines, has said Schettino deviated from the regular route without permission in an attempt to impress passengers.

In his statement, he also denied that the young blonde Moldovan dancer with whom he had dinner that night, Domnica Cemortan, was on the bridge proper when he ordered the “sail-by” of Giglio.

“She was on the threshhold,” he said. “She wasn’t on the bridge because I don’t let anyone there.”

The married skipper said he didn’t even know her last name. “She was our mutual friend who was on board, she had been part of the staff on other occasions,” he said.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/death-toll-reaches-13-costa-concordia-tragedy-article-1.1009913




906
Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: January 22, 2012, 02:29:09 PM »
"A BALLERINA seen dining with the captain of the doomed Costa Concordia was the first person to reach a lifeboat, it was claimed yesterday.

While most passengers and crew fled with nothing, dancer Domnica Cemortan, 25, was on a lifeboat with a packed bag 30 minutes before the cruise liner finally ran aground off the Italian coast.

Her quick escape has prompted claims she was given early warning the vessel was going down before the order was give to abandon ship."

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2012/01/22/costa-concordia-disaster-captain-s-dinner-guest-was-first-passenger-to-get-to-lifeboat-86908-23712516/



907
Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: January 22, 2012, 02:16:27 PM »
He told prosecutors and the investigating judge, in documents leaked by the Italian media, that the company planned the salutes to time with local public holidays on the islands they were due to cruise past.

Schettino's latest claims were a direct contradiction of what Costa chief Pierluigi Foschi said last week at a press conference where he said a 'sail by had been authorised just once before' in the summer of 2010 off the island of Procida, close to Naples.

His version of events in the 135 page judicial document now raises serious questions over just what Costa Cruises knew the night of the disaster and it may explain why Schettino waited for more than an hour to raise the alarm and why he made a series of phone calls to company chiefs at their HQ in Genoa.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2090214/Costa-Concordia-captain-Francesco-Schettino-claims-bosses-knew-sail-salutes.html?ito=feeds-newsxml


908
Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: January 22, 2012, 02:04:15 PM »
GIGLIO, Italy, Jan 22 (Reuters) - The captain of the cruise liner that capsized off Italy's coast has told prosecutors the vessel's operators, Costa Cruises, instructed him to perform a maneuvre that brought it too close to shore, according to leaked transcripts of his questioning."

Costa Cruises have said they were not aware of the dangerous practice of bringing the ship so close to the shore and have suspended the captain, saying he was responsible for the disaster.

But in a sign of the growing confrontation between Schettino and the ship owners, the captain told investigating magistrates Costa had instructed him to do the salute, according to transcripts of his hearing published by Italian media.

"It was planned, we should have done it a week earlier but it was not possible because of bad weather," Schettino said.

"They insisted. They said: 'We do tourist navigation, we have to be seen, get publicity and greet the island'."

He also said that the black box on board had been broken for two weeks, and that he had asked for it to be repaired, in vain.

In the hearing, Schettino insisted he had informed Costa's headquarters of the accident straight away, and his line of conduct had been approved by the company's marine operations director throughout a series of phone conversations.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/22/costa-concordia-captain-ordered-salute_n_1221918.html

Schettino has denied the charges, saying that the ship hit a rock that was not on his map and that he was continuing to direct the ship's evacuation from a lifeboat.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/costa-concordia-may-have-had-unregistered-passengers/articleshow/11599372.cms

909
Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: January 22, 2012, 01:57:29 PM »
"'Disaster day-trippers' have flocked from all over Italy, many driving for hours, to see the 1,000ft-long, 14-storey luxury liner wedged at an angle of 90 degrees, ten days after it ran aground off the Tuscan island of Giglio.

But their curiosity has been criticised as "morbid" by islanders, who say they are being overwhelmed by the influx.

Ferries which run from the mainland port of Porto Santo Stefano to the island were full on Saturday and yesterday, with families and couples drinking beer and eating pizza on the smooth sandstone rocks and patches of sand opposite the capsized ship."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9030910/Costa-Concordia-stricken-cruise-ship-becomes-tourist-spectacle.html

We got the bubbleheaded bleach-blonde, comes on at 5
She can tell you about the [ship] crash with a gleam in her eye
It's interesting when people die, give us dirty laundry

910
Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: January 22, 2012, 01:50:41 PM »
Unregistered passengers might have been aboard the stricken cruise liner that capsized off this Tuscan island, a top rescue official said Sunday, raising the possibility that the number of missing might be higher than the 20 previously announced.

"There could have been X persons who we don't know about who were inside, who were clandestine" passengers aboard the ship, Franco Gabrielli, the national civil protection official in charge of the rescue effort, told reporters at a briefing on the island of Giglio, where the ship, with 4,200 people aboard rammed a reef and sliced open its hull on Jan. 13 before turning over on its side.

Gabrielli said that relatives of a Hungarian woman have told Italian authorities that she had telephoned them from aboard the ship and that they haven't heard from her since the accident. He said it was possible that a woman's body pulled from the wreckage by divers on Saturday might be that of the unregistered passenger.

But the identity of that body and of three male bodies, all badly decomposed after days in the water, have yet to be established. Gabrielli said they have identified the other eight bodies: four French, an Italian, a Hungarian, a German and a Spanish national."

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0122/Costa-Concordia-Stowaways-the-latest-uncertainty

911
Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: January 21, 2012, 11:17:14 PM »
"Schettino may be a culpable scapegoat, but what is emerging from the testimony of passengers and rescuers is that many of the crew were also seemingly at fault, as there appears to have been no properly co-ordinated attempt to get people safely off the ship.

The deputy mayor on the island of Giglio says he couldn’t find any officers on board to give direction to the panicking passengers.

‘After 20 minutes I couldn’t find anybody... there were a lot of people who wanted help but there was no one guiding them.’

It sounds horrendous: terrified people, water rising around them, fighting to climb up a slippery rope.

All of us like to think we would do the right thing should we ever be in a dire situation. Some suggest Schettino’s response was a classic ‘fight or flight’ response that he was not fully in control of.

In the conversation with the coastguard, he sounds distracted. Some even say his instinct to turn the ship back on to a rocky ledge ultimately saved many lives."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2090111/SUZANNE-MOORE-Could-calm-carry-like-Rose.html

912
Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: January 21, 2012, 08:48:48 PM »
"Here are some zingers that stand in Carnival's (and other cruise corporations') way:

    A former crew member claims that there is a, "... coded alarm which is known by the crew. This is done to begin evacuation without panicking the passengers".  After this coded signal went out, crew were telling passengers not to worry and to return to their staterooms.  If true, this statement seems to say that lying to passengers during a disaster is company policy.  Did any of the dead heed the crew's instructions and go back to their rooms to die?
    Confusion in a disaster is to be expected. But, confusion among the leaders during a disaster speaks to a lack of training, drilling, discipline, and standards. How could Costa Cruises trust a man like Captain Schettino to command one of its ships?  What ongoing certification does the line require of its officers and crew?
    Ship's captain's egos are traditionally large.  The cruise lines embrace this tradition by building up their captains to be super-social directors whose job is smiling and posing with passengers.  What proportion of a captain's duties are nautical and what portion are PR related? Are the proportions healthy? Safe? I think we need to know.
    International law requires that cruise ships be evacuated within 30 minutes.  Unlucky passengers on the Concordia waited more than five hours on deck to be rescued. Some were screaming as the last of the lifeboats left. If the Concordia met safety requirements, then those standards are too weak.  They must  assume an evacuation in a perfect situation when there would be no need to abandon ship. No one abandons ship when everything is working and the ship is upright and sound."

http://technorati.com/lifestyle/travel/article/why-cruise-lines-may-not-be/


913
Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: January 21, 2012, 05:51:51 PM »
"Alcaro said the most optimistic scenario would be to stabilise the ship and pump the oil out through a technique known as "hot tap".

"The oil on the ship is very thick and sticky, so you'd have to drill a hole in the hulk and warm it up to make it more fluid and easier to extract," he told Reuters.

"That could be done in about a month for the 13 external tanks on the ship. There are another 10 tanks inside, and those are a lot more difficult to reach," he said.

But if the ship slips deeper underwater, it would actually be better if the tanks ruptured open and the fuel floated up to the surface, he said.

"There would be panic for a couple of weeks of course but a 'black sea' of fuel would make it visible and easier to recover. The very worst scenario is having oil slowly leaking out."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/20/uk-italy-ship-environment-idUSLNE80J02Y20120120

914
Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: January 21, 2012, 05:30:42 PM »

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/20/graphic-the-final-moments-of-the-costa-concordia/


915
Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: January 21, 2012, 05:22:35 PM »
"The company is not only going to refund everybody but they will offer a 30 per cent discount on future cruises if they want to stay loyal to the company."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9030212/Costa-Concordia-insulting-cruise-offer-to-survivors.html



"Costa Crociere today denied that it offered discounts on other cruises to Costa Concordia survivors, according to an e- mailed statement. The Genoa-based company offered passengers assistance to return home and plans to refund all expenses, including the cruise fare, it said. "

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-24/italy-urged-to-curb-cruise-ship-routes-after-accident.html

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