Twenty Pilotage Accidents, One Pattern: The Assumption Nobody Challenged
Source: UK P&I Club, Pilotage Operations and Navigational Safety: Lessons from Accident Investigations (12 October 2026)
Data set: 20 serious accidents involving vessels of 1,000 GT or more under pilotage in Japan, reported and published between 2010 and 2026
Relevant to: Masters, Chief Officers, OOWs, deck cadets, pilots
The Headline: It Is Rarely One Person
The Club’s point is simple and uncomfortable. Accidents under pilotage seldom come from one person’s mistake. They develop when an initial error or unsafe assumption is not recognised and challenged by the bridge team. The pilot may be wrong. The bridge team is there to notice.
The authors worked from Japan Transport Safety Board reports, because Japan publishes detailed investigations of serious accidents under pilotage, and set them against the International Group of P&I Clubs’ review of pilotage incidents from 1999 to 2019.
What The 20 Cases Show
- Vessel type. Container ships were the largest group, at about 40% of cases. The article notes they were about 60% of foreign-going arrivals at Japan’s five major ports in 2025, so some of that is simply traffic. Larger ships are also more affected by manoeuvrability limits, berth layout, channel width, wind and current. Tankers and LNG carriers deserve special attention because the consequences of an accident are worse.
- Accident type. Vessel-to-vessel collisions were the most common, followed by contact with port facilities, navigational structures or other objects, and groundings.
- Causes. The article groups them in three categories, and a single accident can have several:
- Assumptions and preconceived notions — the most common category. The most frequent were assumptions about other vessels’ movements, followed by misjudging the ship’s own movement, her distance from the berth and her position.
- Technical problems with ship handling and navigation.
- Bridge Resource Management weaknesses. The common thread was information sharing, teamwork and understanding the pilot’s intentions, all part of communication within the bridge team.
Two Examples From The Article
The assumption. A pilot expected another ship to speed up and pass ahead. His ship kept accelerating and collided with it. The master had not been given the pilot’s information and the bridge coordination was poor.
The unchecked mark. At night a pilot mistook one buoy’s light for another and altered course toward a shoal. The ship grounded. The pilot had not checked the mark against GPS or the chart, and nobody on the bridge questioned him.
What The Club Recommends
| Who | What to do |
|---|---|
| Pilots | Explain the detailed pilotage plan in advance so the crew can challenge it. Confirm marks and position from more than one source, such as GPS and the chart, not radar and visual observation alone. Keep communicating, and raise concerns and ask questions promptly. |
| Masters and bridge teams | Take part for the whole pilotage, not just at the start. Monitor, cross-check and challenge when unsure. Use PACE — Probe, Alert, Challenge, Emergency — to escalate a concern in stages, supporting the pilot’s decisions rather than undermining them. Build a culture where concerns can be raised without hesitation, and be ready to act if there is an immediate threat to safety. |
| Both: the Master-Pilot Information Exchange | Agree the passage plan, expected manoeuvres, tug requirements, conditions, constraints and contingencies before pilotage, and keep exchanging information once underway. The Club supports a more standardised exchange backed by passage plans and visual information, not verbal exchange alone. |
| Industry | Strengthen practical BRM training. STCW sets the competency but leaves the content of training programmes to individual organisations. |
Why It Matters To You
An assumption is a decision you have not noticed yourself making. Under pilotage, the pilot has local knowledge and the master has command, and each is tempted to rely on the other. The cheapest control on the bridge is a question asked early: what are we expecting that vessel to do, and how do we know?
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