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« on: January 16, 2012, 03:49:43 PM »
Costa Cruises CEO: "He [the captain] decided to change the course of the ship"
The captain of a cruise ship that ran aground off Italy made an "unapproved, unauthorised" deviation in course, the liner's owners say.
Costa Cruises boss Pier Luigi Foschi accused Capt Francesco Schettino of sailing too close to a nearby island in order to show the ship to locals.
The captain says the rocks the ship hit were not on his chart.
Six people were killed and 16 are still missing after the Costa Concordia's hull was torn open on Friday.
Rescue crews restarted the search for survivors on Monday afternoon, three hours after work had been suspended because bad weather had caused the ship to move.
At an emotional news conference in Genoa, Mr Foschi fought back tears as he apologised for the accident.
"The company will be close to the captain and will provide him with all the necessary assistance, but we need to acknowledge the facts and we cannot deny human error," he said.
"This route was put in correctly. The fact that it left from this course is due solely to a manoeuvre by the commander that was unapproved, unauthorised and unknown to Costa.
"He wanted to show the ship, to [go] nearby this island of Giglio, so he decided to change the course of the ship to go closer to the island."
He said Costa's ships have their routes programmed and alarms sound when they go off course.
Some of the passengers on board the ship described hearing a horrendous noise as the ship struck rocks at about 21:30 (20:30 GMT) on Friday.
There were scenes of panic as alarms sounded soon after and the ship began to list. Capt Schettino steered the vessel closer to land to where it now lies on its side just metres off Giglio island.
Some of the passengers and crew were forced to swim for land as the angle of the ship made boarding life boats impossible.
The 4,200 passengers and crew on board had not conducted an emergency drill after leaving on its cruise several hours earlier.
Oil spill fears
Rescue crews found a sixth body, that of a male passenger, early on Monday.
The BBC's Matthew Price says the ship has visibly sunk lower in the water during the course of the day.
He says divers have told him that it is dark and difficult to see inside the ship, and that it is disorientating swimming along corridors that have been turned on their side.
Environment Minister Corrado Clini said there was an extremely high risk of a damaging spill of fuel from the ship's tanks.
"The vessel has reservoirs full of fuel, it is a heavy diesel which could sink down to the seabed, that would be a disaster," he told La Stampa newspaper.
"As soon as possible, the fuel will be removed from the vessel. But we have to take into account the precarious state of the ship."
Mr Foschi said so far there were no signs of any leakage. He said 2,300 tonnes of fuel oil were contained in 17 double-hulled tanks and more oil was in another four reservoirs.
Capt Schettino, 52, has worked for Costa Cruises for 11 years. The company said he joined the firm in 2002 as an official in charge of security.
He was made captain in 2006, after serving as second-in-command.
Like all captains in the fleet he took part in a continuous programme of training and passed all the required checks, Costa Cruises said.
Capt Schettino has denied any wrongdoing, saying the rocks his ship hit were not marked on his nautical chart.
"We should have had deep water beneath us," he told Italian TV. "We were about 300m (1,000ft) from the rocks more or less. We shouldn't have hit anything."
He also denied claims by prosecutors that he left the Costa Concordia before evacuation was complete. "We were the last to leave the ship," Capt Schettino said.
First officer Ciro Ambrosio has also been detained.
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