{"id":5913,"date":"2012-01-15T21:48:04","date_gmt":"2012-01-15T20:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/?p=5913"},"modified":"2012-12-11T18:05:24","modified_gmt":"2012-12-11T17:05:24","slug":"accidents-nowadays-are-mostly-human-errors-spanair-5022-and-costa-concordia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/?p=5913","title":{"rendered":"Accidents nowadays are mostly human errors, Spanair 5022 and Costa Concordia"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Spanair flight 5022<\/a> had its fatal accident in which most passengers died I said in my blog <\/a>that most likely the accident was caused by\u00a0 the pilots who made the tragic error of forgetting to take off with flaps. \u00a0I mentioned that I was a pilot myself and could see how the pilots paid for these horrible mistake with their lives and that of most passengers. \u00a0As you can see then some people criticized me with comments like this which argue that I had no business commenting on this tragedy before the official investigation.<\/p>\n

Apreciado Martin,<\/span>
\nme defraudas con este post. Con opiniones como la tuya nos evitariamos investigaciones de accidentes tan tediosas y ..sin importancia.<\/span>
\nTe crei con algo de \u201csentido comun\u201d, pero ya sabes lo que dicen, que \u201cel sentido\u201dpor ser \u201ccomun\u201d, nos toca a muy poco a cada uno.<\/span>
\nUn poco de rigor y respeto; y no subir el trafico de tu blog a costa de desgracias de este tipo.<\/span><\/em>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But after a long investigation I was right. \u00a0The pilots took off without flaps which is an incredible mistake to make, but humans are humans and we make mistakes. Planes should simply not take off without flaps and many don’t.<\/a> I don’t blame the pilots fully in my post because I think engineering should have prevented this.<\/p>\n

Well the same is true with cruise ships. \u00a0Engineering should have and could have averted this tragedy by not allowing ships to come close to coast lines without warnings. \u00a0Ships should also have ways to turn themselves when they are in collision course with land.<\/p>\n

Before the investigation this is what I think happened (and of course I may be wrong). \u00a0I believe that the captain of Costa Concordia<\/a> steered into the Island of Giglio<\/a>.\u00a0 You can see this from Marine Traffic<\/a>. \u00a0I think the captain lies when he says he hit an uncharted rock while he was at a safe distance from the coast.\u00a0 Instead he collided with the coastline either because he was just not at the helm or else because he was at the helm and wanted to show off his steering skills by going very close to the island of Giglio, but he then came too close and ran aground. \u00a0You can see the coastline in detail if you download a software called Navionics Mediterranean in your iPhone, Android or iPad. I have it because I sail and I am the skipper of my own sailboat.\u00a0 That Island is not like the nearby coast between Corsica and Sardinia near the Island of Cavallo which is full of rocks and you can very well have an uncharted rock and collide against it as the skipper says. \u00a0The Giglio coast line instead goes down very quickly, to 100 meters or more. \u00a0The island of Giglio is like the top of a hill or mountain and most likely\u00a0Francesco Schettino the skipper just drove into it either because he was “asleep at the wheel” or because he was trying on purpose to sail so close to the coast that he hit it in this tragic incident.<\/span><\/p>\n

Added later:\u00a0 I read this article about Showboating<\/a> and it corroborates that the theory that the captain steered the ship into the coastline.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>
<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Spanair flight 5022 had its fatal accident in which most passengers died I said in my blog that most likely the accident was caused by\u00a0 the pilots who made the tragic error of forgetting to take off with flaps. \u00a0I mentioned that I was a pilot myself and could see how the pilots paid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[605,606],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5913"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5913"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6367,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5913\/revisions\/6367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}