[Rhodes22-list] Bad Tack

[Brad Haslett]

Got a phone call today from the dealer who sold us our new dump truck in
Gulfport about a plane crash.  The dealer was flying two customers to the
Mayo Clinic but the Citation Jet landed in Cresco, Iowa, ran off the runway,
killed the pilots, and seriousily injured the two passengers.  As usual, the
news agencies don't know squat about aviation or the accident, but write the
story as if they were experts. I can only guess that if they're so FOS about
airplanes, they are probably FOS about everything else they
cover. Disgusting! Anyway, while researching that, I came across several
news accounts of the cruise line incident that happened last week.  Here is
an explanation that seems on the surface to make the most sense. Sounds like
it was a tack gone bad.

Brad

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   WESH.COM I-Team: Cruise Ship's List Caused By Human Error
Jul 21,2006 00:00 by WESH.COM
*ORLANDO, Fla. -- *WESH 2 News has learned the accident involving a Princess
Cruise ship was due to human error, not a mechanical malfunction.

Two hundred and forty passengers were hurt when the Crown Princess listed in
the open sea off the Brevard County coast.

Two investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and two more
from the U.S. Coast Guard are riding along on the bridge of the Crown
Princess as it heads back to its home port in New York.

They're running final tests on the automatic pilot system, but a high level
source has told the WESH 2 I-Team that human error, not the automatic pilot,
caused the accident.

A series of still pictures aboard the Crown Princess on Tuesday afternoon
showed the chaos and confusion on what was supposed to be the last leg of a
pleasure cruise. The ship, 11 miles out in the Atlantic, tilted sharply to
the port side.

Federal investigators boarded the ship, and almost immediately figured out
what happened. It wasn't a computer glitch. It wasn't a mechanical problem.

A high-level source, who asked not to be identified for fear of losing his
or her job, told the WESH 2 I-Team it was simple human error.

"The public needs to know. The ship is safe. There is nothing wrong with the
automatic pilot system. It was human error. They made a mistake. Mistakes
happen," the source said.

Here's how our source explains what happened.

After clearing Port Canaveral, the captain set the ship's automatic pilot to
head to New York. He then left the cruise line's bridge. All standard and
appropriate procedure.

As the automatic pilot found its course back to New York, it started making
a left turn when the person in charge on the bridge -- a junior officer --
noticed the ship's automatic pilot needle was far to the left.

Our source goes on to tell us that the junior officer "panicked," then took
the ship out of automatic pilot thinking the meter was showing that the ship
was turning too sharply to one side.

But instead of turning the Crown Princess back to the right, the junior
officer accidentally kept the ship in an even sharper left hand turn --
almost like over-correcting in a car.

This caused the massive 113,000-ton cruise ship to list severely, tumbling
passengers, pool water and everything else on board into chaos...