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Court rejects Costa Concordia captain’s manslaughter plea bargain
TransportProsecutors rejected a plea bargain offer by the captain of the cruise ship Costa Concordia, which capsized off Italy’s west coast last year with the loss of 32 lives, lawyers said on Tuesday. Captain Francesco Schettino is accused of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship. He has admitted making mistakes but says he should [...]
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The Italian island where the Concordia capsized wants €80m from Costa
TransportThe Italian island of Giglio has asked for at least €80m (£68m) in compensation for “irreparable damages” done to its economy and image by the Costa Concordia grounding off its coast. At the beginning of preliminary hearings held in the Tuscan town of Grosseto, a lawyer for Giglio’s council said it had formally requested compensation [...]
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Carnival Corp. plays the victim card in Concordia disaster
TransportThe owner of the shipwrecked Costa Concordia asked a court on Monday to consider it a victim of the disaster, saying it too wants to seek damages for the 2012 grounding off Tuscany that killed 32 people. Costa Crociere SpA, a unit of Miami-based Carnival Corp., made the request as the court in Grosseto, Italy, [...]
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Costa accepts $1.3 million fine to avoid criminal charges in Concordia disaster
TransportCosta Cruises, the unit of Carnival Corp that owned and operated the capsized cruise liner Costa Concordia, has accepted a $1.31 million fine to settle potential criminal charges concerning last year’s deadly accident off the coast of Italy, a company spokesman said on Wednesday. Costa Cruises had been under investigation as the employer of the [...]
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Senator Rockefeller is taking on the cruise industry one ship at a time
TransportU.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller wants the cruise industry to clean up its act. Appalled by the recent events aboard the Carnival Triumph cruise ship, which was crippled by an engine fire leaving 4,200 people stranded on board in the Gulf of Mexico for five days last month, Rockefeller, D-W.Va., believes the industry needs to do [...]
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Carnival downplays its mess: Triumph and Dream outages aren’t so bad
TransportUpdate: Here are some of our favorite tone-deaf quotes from Carnival officials during the conference call: Howard Frank, COO, on the Carnival Triumph fiasco: ”Although our emergency generator power was not adequate to provide effective passenger comfort, the emergency systems we had on board are in accordance with and, in fact, go beyond the latest [...]
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Cruise industry’s response to accidents? Cutting prices for consumers
TransportThe cruise industry may be forced into cutting prices after safety concerns were raised following incidents that took place on the same day involving the ships Thomson Majesty and Carnival Triumph. The death of five crew from Thomson Majesty and the engine-room fire that immobilised Carnival Triumph were a serious blow to the industry which [...]
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Costa Concordia disaster: prosecutors ask for manslaughter verdict of captain
TransportItalian prosecutors on Monday officially requested an indictment of the Costa Concordia‘s captain on manslaughter charges in the shipwreck of the cruise liner that killed 32 people last year off the Tuscan coast. Prosecutors based in Grosseto, Tuscany, also are seeking a trial for Francesco Schettino, the captain of the luxury cruise liner, on charges [...]
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Six worst cruises of the decade: Pirates, storms, and stomach bugs
TransportAs the cruise ship Carnival Triumph approached the dock in Alabama this morning, passengers chanted “Let me off! Let me off!” Four days earlier, an engine fire had knocked out the ship’s power and transformed their pleasure cruise into a nightmare. Drains and toilets overflowed, sewage coated cabin floors, and many passengers moved their bedding [...]
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Weaker results than expected for insurer with big Costa Concordia and Hurricane Sandy ties
TransportPayouts for the Costa Concordia disaster and Superstorm Sandy meant Catlin’s shares were one of the mid-cap index’s biggest losers. In its annual results on Friday, the insurer said the bill for the liner’s grounding was $16m (£10.2m) above previous estimates, while the storm that battered the US cost $25m more than had been thought. [...]
