Italy liner disaster captain broke the rules—owner

ROME—The captain of a cruise liner that ran aground off the coast of Italy, leaving at least six dead, broke the rules in an “inexplicable” error, the head of the company that owns the vessel said Monday.

But Pier Luigi Foschi, the chief executive of Costa Crociere, also paid tribute to members of the Costa Concordia crew for their role in the rescue of the passengers, saying that they had “all behaved like heroes.”

“They managed to evacuate more than 4,000 people in two hours,” Foschi told journalists at a press conference in Genoa, struggling to fight back tears.

The ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, and first officer Ciro Ambrosio, Italian prosecutors say, could face charges of multiple homicide and abandoning ship before all the passengers were rescued.

Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper reported on Monday that Schettino had sailed the ship close to the rocky shores of Giglio Island to please the head waiter who comes from there.

Foschi said that the course that the captain had decided to take was “his own initiative, contrary to the written rules” of the company.

“He carried out a maneuver which had not been approved by us and we disassociate ourselves from such behavior,” he added.

But he said that the human factor in such an episode was “inexplicable.”

Foschi also called for prudence before judging the captain’s actions in the aftermath of the disaster, saying there were “reliable witnesses” saying that he stayed on board “a very long time.”

Costa Crociere, Europe’s largest cruise operator, had said in a statement Sunday that it appeared Schettino had “made errors of judgment that had serious consequences.”

“If there had been a technical problem, the alarm would have sounded,” Foschi said. “There was no problem with safety on the ship. It has ultra-secure safety features.”

He stressed that inspectors had toured the vessel in December and carried out simulated evacuations without noting anything abnormal.

Replying to a journalist, Foschi angrily denied the company, a subsidiary of the US Carnival group, had made cuts in the safety budget for its vessels.

“We have never, absolutely never, planned such cuts,” he said.

He predicted the company would go through a difficult period as a result of the disaster but its reputation would be restored. “There are a million faithful customers who support us,” he said, citing messages of solidarity from former passengers.

Estimating the immediate direct cost of the accident at $93 million, he said the company had solid foundations financially, adding, “We have 24,000 employees to protect.”

“There is no question of changing either the name of the company or its prospects,” he said, dismissing any long term impact on the cruise industry.

As for the Costa Concordia, Foschi said he did not yet know if it would be a total write-off or if it could be salvaged and returned to service.”

Warning that salvage would be “very difficult,” he said the company would know by Sunday how to go about it.