Airline chief speaks out about ship blast

By Jean Christou

UK-based Cypriot airline owner Stelios Haji-Ioannou has spoken out for the first time about his and his father’s acquittal in a case involving a ship explosion in 1991.

Haji-Ioannou told Lloyds List that lessons from the Haven disaster are in danger of being lost amid the furore over the case.

Haji-Ioannou and his father Loucas were acquitted by an Italian court last week of manslaughter and intimidating and attempting to bribe witnesses.

At the centre of the case was the allegation that he and his father kept the Haven in such bad repair that it blew up.

The vessel had been carrying one million barrels of Iranian crude when it was rocked by an explosion on April 11, 1991, in Genoa killing six crew members.

A large part of the oil was believed to have burned off before the ship sank, although some 14,000 tonnes spilled into the sea.

The court decision caused outrage among seafarers’ unions and environmental groups.

However Haji-Ioannou said there had been scant effort within the tanker industry to minimise the damage which could be wreaked by human error.

“The International Maritime Organisation or someone else should now take this matter in hand because we need more idiot-proof ships,” he said.

According to the owners and the court-appointed experts the Haven exploded because the chief officer allowed a dangerous build-up of pressure in one of the central tanks.

He said there had been a number of such accidents due to pressurisation, affecting older and newer tankers, and that it was time for a mechanism to be developed to counteract the problem.

In the Haven case it was claimed that the chief officer, although well- qualified and experienced, was relatively new to the company.

“The religious way that airline pilots double-check all procedures has been absent in the shipping industry until recently, although I believe and hope that the International Safety Management Code will reduce scope for an individual’s mistake,” Haji-Ioannou said.

The judge in the case has said he will give the reasons for the acquittal in 90 days.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.