Wednesday, December 4, 2024

New Zealand Navy ship lost due to series of human errors

They didn't turn off the autopilot:

A Court of Inquiry that was stood up following the grounding of the Royal New Zealand Navy dive and hydrographic ship HMNZS Manawanui in Samoa on October 5, 2024, determined that the incident was the result of human error.

"The direct cause of the grounding has been determined as a series of human errors which meant the ship’s autopilot was not disengaged when it should have been," said Rear Admiral Garin Golding, who stood up the Court of Inquiry in order to understand the facts of what occurred.

"The crew did not realise Manawanui remained in autopilot and, as a consequence, mistakenly believed its failure to respond to direction changes was the result of a thruster control failure."

And so the autopilot drove the ship onto the reef.  It seems that the manual on how to deal with this has "check that the autopilot is turned off" as step 1.

 

7 comments:

Old NFO said...

Attention to detail...sigh... Checklist are a thing!

Glen Filthie said...

Oh well that's good! I'd hate to think the accident had anything to do with diversity and commisioning menopausal lesbian officers and vibrant and diverse crew people...

Gerry said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gerry said...

An autopilot is quite capable of steering a vessel around a reef or bar IF you put the correct way points in.
Navigation be hard!

Peteforester said...

So... A New Zealand naval ship goes down under... How fitting...

Skyler the Weird said...

The Captain was busy diving instead of driving the ship

Tree Mike said...

Awright, that was funny.