6mo ago

Damning report reveals cause of HMNZS Manawanui's sinking off Samoa

www.nzherald.co.nz

Watch: Damning report reveals cause of HMNZS Manawanui's sinking off Samoa

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

Hows that for a work story... I've had some bad days at the office, but they have not resulted in the loss of a $100 million dollar piece of equipment.

18 comments

Yeah, that's not very typical. l'd like to make that point.
- Ah, but the front didn't fall off. That is very typical.

NZ and ship autopilot just aren't working together well are they?
- Heh, if I remember right at least the KiwiRail crew knew the autopilot was on, they just didn't know how to override it didn't they?
  
  Yes but its probably the same causal factors - people being placed in command of vessels they don't actually understand how to operate.
  We always were a maritime nation until sailing became closer to flying and programming.
  
  Seems like a poorly designed autopilot, I would've thought it should disengage with any user input.

I think a well designed system should have a reminder alert that rings if autopilot is enabled and then the controls get moved around a lot.
- Given that this was also a factor in the grounding of one of the Interislander ferries recently, I'm thinking autopilot systems are much more complex than they need to be.

There is a pretty good video about the details of the sinking, and some of the issues that may have contributed to the situation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNx5V4GmSdE
- Hey I've had this video sitting around waiting for me to watch it, I finally got around to it. It's a great video, does a great job of summarising the announcement, explaining how the ship works, and discussing potential causes and problem points.
  Thanks for posting it!

Oh, jesus christ.
I'm starting to think the marine industry needs to take a good, hard look at the helm and autopilot systems in use, it sounds like they're far more difficult to operate than they need to be.
It's also been a major factor in two different vessel groundings, just with NZ flagged vessels.

I can't believe they're covering up more of Lightning God Thor's antics, again.

Why doesn't the maritime industry take cues from the aviation industry as they have worked out a rather simple solution in response to several losses of planes due to similar issues.
Have auto pilot that disengages with sustained mass input of the controls with an accompanying audio alert of "autopilot disengaged, manual control, autopilot disengaged, manual control".

18 comments