Reuters suggest that only the aircraft involved was grounded, and that passengers were transferred to another 787 for their flight to BKK.

Guess you didn’t see my other thread I started……..Boeing actually delivered 247 747’s in the first 6 years of deliveries, Airbus has delivered 77 A380’s in the same time frame. If that was a bad economy……well, I wonder how many 747’s might have been delivered if times were better.

IMO, the prescence of long range twins, 767/787/A330/777 have really hurt the A380. In the early years of the 747 (before the DC10 and L1011 deliveries ramped up), there was no alternative unless one wanted to go all the way down to 707 size.

Hardly fair to compare the number of early 747 deliveries against A380 deliveries, as when the former was introduced there really was nothing like it.

Interesting article on the potential salvage of C/CONCORDIA.

From the gCaptain website:

“Grave imprudence and incompetence” – Transcript of the Preliminary Court Inquiry into Costa Concordia Disaster.

gCaptain’s John Konrad Narrates the Final Maneuvers of the Costa Concordia [VIDEO]

The video shows the AIS track for the cruiseship’s last few minutes. The commentary is a bit tedious (and I would opine, in places, erroneous) but the video does show the courses followed by the ship as it approached the island, and subsequent to the collision itself.

My own personal view is that after losing power in the electric motors driving the propellers (it matters not whether she had azimuth drive or conventional props – electric motors won’t work too well when immersed in sea water) she drifted northwards until the starboard anchor was dropped. She then continued to move forward until the anchor cable paid was fully stretched out, and the anchor found something to take hold of (the charts indicate a sandy bottom, not good for holding). At that point, the ship made its abrupt turn (not, I would argue, as the commentator suggests in the video by using bow thrusters), and began to move back aided by the weight of the anchor cable settling down to the seabed and with the wind pushing her too.

I still think (as I hinted in my earlier post) that a decision was made by someone (perhaps Schettino, maybe somebody else) to drop the anchor to initiate the manoeuver and bring COSTA CONCORDIA closer inshore.

[My theories are based on more than 30 years experience in the Merchant Navy.]

Regardless of the actions taken by certain individuals after the ship reached her current resting place, someone on board made a fairly quick assessment of the situation that had suddenly arisen and, despite apparently having lost propulsion (and hence steering), managed to get the ship turned around and closer inshore. It was this action that probably accounted for the vast majority of those on board successfully getting ashore.

There’s been a lot of talk about the way that the ship rolled over yards from the shore. If the water had been a little deeper, it is quite possible that she might have reached the 20 degree list that she acquired fairly early on, and remained at that angle. Because the water was fairly shallow where she ended up, I think that it’s likely that – as she was still filling with water and losing what buoyancy and stability she still had left – she began to roll over further with the curved underbody resting on the bottom already.

From what I have read in the press and online, there seems to be one major difference between how this tragedy will be treated in Italy, compared to how it would have been handled in, say, the UK. Had British authorities been involved, the accident and events following would be examined in detail by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch, a body who generally do not apportion blame but make suggestions to prevent another tragedy of the same type from occurring again. The Italians, however, seem to be treating this purely as a criminal trial.

What lessons – if any – will be learned from this remain to be seen.

From the BBC…

The captain of the cruise ship that capsized on Friday, killing at least 11 people, has admitted making a navigation mistake, Italian media say…

“I was navigating by sight because I knew the depths well and I had done this manoeuvre three or four times,” he reportedly said.

“But this time I ordered the turn too late and I ended up in water that was too shallow. I don’t know why it happened.”

Found this in the Peterborough Evening Telegraph…

A plane usually based in Belgium that is used by NATO for international surveillance of airspace caught people’s attention as it circled around Peterborough for hours on Monday.

The sight of the plane yesterday morning caused a stir, with concerned residents contacting the Ministry of Defence, who explained it was a NATO Boeing E-3 Sentry.

The surveillance plane had been sent by the multi-national peace-keeping organisation on a standard training trip around the United Kingdom.

The NATO plane is an Airborne Warning And Control System (AWACS) that is used primarily to detect other planes.

It travelled in large concentric circles while flying at 33,000 feet and was spotted for miles around as yesterday’s sunny conditions meant visibility was perfect from the ground.

The BBC is reporting that Sucking (who traded as Scot Airways) has just been bought over by Loganair.