Steering system to blame in bulk carrier's river accident, NTSB says

摘要

Steering failures caused a bulk carrier to strike a tanker and then hit a pier in the Mississippi River in 2014, investigators found. The bulk carrier Flag Gangos, operated by Golden Union Shipping Co. in Greece and owned by Southport Wave SA in Panama, ran into the docked tanker Pamisos and rammed a floating pier at Gretna, La. In a December 2015 report, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said steering equipment had been neglected. "The probable cause of the accident was the delay by the Flag Gangos operating company in completing a mandatory upgrade to the vessel's steering system, and failure to routinely test the steering system's hydraulic fluid for debris as required by the manufacturer," NTSB investigators wrote in their report. "Contributing was the failure of the steering system manufacturer to schedule and complete the mandatory upgrade."