Pilotage is compulsory for all vessels entering or leaving Egyptian ports and for vessels transiting the Suez Canal, regardless of whether the vessels call at Port Said or Suez or not.
Pilotage services are administered under the local regulations of the subject port and the Suez Canal Formal Regulations. Suez Canal pilots are under the employment and authority of the Suez Canal Organisation, whereas the other pilots are not state pilots but subject to supervision of the port authorities concerned.
Liability: Pursuant to the Egyptian Maritime Code No. 8 of 1990 (Art. 279) as well as rulings of the Supreme Court in Egypt, the responsibility for pilotage operation in port and in the Suez Canal lies entirely with the Master of the guided vessel even in case of the pilots error.
PANAMA (THE PANAMA CANAL)
Pilotage through the Panama Canal is compulsory and carried out exclusively by Panama Canal Commission pilots (about 270 pilots). Unlike most ports of the world, Canal pilots do not act in an advisory capacity but take command over the vessel.
Liability:It is possible to hold the Panama Canal Commission liable for accidents which occur during Canal transit and which can be attributed to actions of Canal pilots in command of the vessel. Claims procedures are ruled by the Panama Canal Act of 1979 with amendments and Code of Federal Regulations. Amended claim procedures were also introduced with the Panama Canal Transition Act which entered into force on 18th November 1997.
I’ve been through the canal five times. The captain was on the bridge as OOD, giving orders to the helmsman in Control, but there was an SCA pilot on the bridge with him, giving instructions.
I know it’s not the same, but back in the day I used to drive trucks across European borders before the EU made them redundant.
The usual procedure was to buy duty-free cartons on the ferry and simply hand one over with the paperwork at each crossing. In my experience, the only land crossing where this didn’t work was the one between Northern Ireland and the South.
Failure to pay the ‘toll’ could lead to long delays and more than normal scrutiny.
If you notice, I ascribed the claim to my memory but if you insist on cites, here is one from The Guardian and here is one from the FlyerTalk Forums. One poster said, “Painting over the logo was common practice for years. However, in a high profile incident, the airline’s name keeps getting mentioned in the news anyway.”
Thanks for the cites, but the unbelievable part is you said it was done at the crash site with bodies laying about.
Decommissioned planes, whether crash victims or not, often have their livery painted over.
That was purely my speculation, base on the idea that photos of the crashed plane are going to be all over the news reports, so I was guessing you’d want to do it immediately.
I have a number of photos of mildly crashed airplanes (i.e runway overshoots, etc.) from my father’s time as an air traffic controller in Gander, back when it was SOP to land there to refuel before or after the long Atlantic crossing. In a lot of them the airline name has been painted out or covered up. These would have been a day or so after the accident, when Dad had a chance to get out to the site when off duty, so not as the wreck was still smouldering (actually, none on fire, just bent a bit).
Could they use high pressure water to dig the dirt out from around the bow and/or stern? It seems to me that that would be faster than an excavator. Unless it’s solid rock, of course, but it looks like a lot of sand.
The sand still has to go somewhere. I suspect that blasting the banks with water might make the channel wider, but shallower, as the sand washed down into the canal.
Painting over the logo and tail fin post-accident for airliners was/is done but is far from universal. No, not while the wreckage is still smoldering & bodies are strewn about. But as soon as the carrier can get their own people in there they sometimes did/do that. It seems to have been more common in the 2nd and third tier operators, charter outfits, etc. The majors seem to be content to take their lumps in the media.
Or at least that’s ow it has been. I have many photos found online of accidents from the 1980s and subsequent where the major part of the carrier name/logo is obliterated. Just enough to preclude the rubes from identifying it, but anyone in the industry would be fooled for about 3 seconds tops. And again, by and large this was your oddball tour operators, not outfits like Delta, Lufthansa, JAL, or BA.
I can’t say whether this is still current practice since it’s been quite awhile since there was a major carrier crash that left identifiable chunks. There’ have been darn few accidents the last 10-ish years, and those that have occurred have left a crater at best. In the era of social media and everything being recorded live as it happens the idea of hiding the logo may be recognized as closing the barn door after the horse is in the next county.
