Crown Princess Accident

[Enrico]

I am intersted to know if anyone has had experience with auto pilot failures on large cruise ships or other liners. It appears the crown princess had such a failure and that they are more common than you might think. Check out these links and let me know you you have any insights or other information.

Crown Princess Investigation Site

Crown Princess is not the only boat to turn sharply causing injury

[PAR]

As it turns out there wasn't an equipment or software problem aboard the Crown Prince, just a junior officer that did something stupid.

The skipper set the autopilot when he cleared for NY, the ship began it's swing to port, as programmed, and the skipper left the bridge, leaving the junior on the watch. All quite normal stuff. The junior looked over the instrumentation and got panicky over the autopilot's swing to port and turned off the auto pilot. He then tried a correction turn, but turned the ship harder to port, which caused the ship to list severely at that speed. I don't know if the junior corrected his blunder or if the skipper had returned to the bridge and eased the hard over helm, but the problem came out within minutes of the USCG arrival aboard the ship.

Find another ambulance, preferably with as deep of pockets, to chase, please.

[Enrico]

Human error is typically the explanation which dominates. Of course, once the problem is identified, true intellects can work on reducing risk moving forward. Training and experience are often the biggest areas of safety concern. Hopefully, the cause can be isolated and corrected.

Thanks for the info. many of the reviews of this ship seemed to note problems with service and programs as a result of the fact that these folks were learnign a new ship and had not quite figured it all out yet. it sounds like inexperience may have been a factor? As with the Ethan Allen disaster whey they tried to blame it on the wave, maybe the early reports of mechanical failure will prove misdirected....

I'll ignore the self serving ambulance comment .. my interest is safety and information… but you don’t really know me yet do you? :-)