New SOLAS Pilot Transfer Arrangement Requirements — What's Changing, and When

Why This Is Worth Reading Now, Not in 2027

Four separate flag administrations and class societies issued guidance on the same regulatory change within days of each other this week — Malta, Lloyd's Register, and the Korean Register (twice) all pointed to the same revised IMO pilot transfer requirements. That's not a coincidence of publishing schedules; it's the industry getting ahead of a real deadline. It also lands the same week as a MAIB investigation into a fatal fall from a bulk carrier's pilot ladder, caused in part by transfer equipment that had quietly become unfit for use. The regulation and the real-world failure it's meant to prevent are the same story.

What's Actually Changing

In June 2025, IMO's Maritime Safety Committee (MSC 110) adopted amendments to SOLAS Regulation V/23 together with new performance standards under Resolution MSC.576(110). Where the current regime largely describes how pilot transfer equipment should be rigged and used, the new performance standards go further upstream — governing the design, manufacture, installation, maintenance and inspection of the equipment itself. That's a meaningful shift: it targets equipment that degrades or is built to a poor standard in the first place, not just crews handling good equipment badly on the day.

The Timeline

• 1 January 2028 — pilot transfer arrangements installed on or after this date must be designed, manufactured, constructed, secured and installed to the new performance standards.
• 1 January 2029 — for arrangements already installed before 2028, compliance with the new standards must be verified no later than the ship's first survey on or after this date.
• Now — early voluntary implementation is actively encouraged under MSC.1/Circ.1690, and several flag states and operators are already moving ahead of the mandatory dates.

What Already Applies Today

None of this changes what's required right now, before 2028. Ships already have a duty under the current SOLAS V/23 to rig pilot ladders correctly, and — in the UK — that duty is fleshed out by MGN 432 (M+F), read together with section 18.7.5 of the Code of Safety Working Practices for Merchant Seamen, and the rigging/testing procedures in MSN 1716 (M+F). MGN 432 is specific on one point worth repeating: an officer nominated by the master must supervise the rigging, testing and use of pilot transfer arrangements, and must ensure the crew members involved have actually been instructed in the procedure — not just assigned to it.

The Practical Takeaway

Whatever your flag state's timeline for the 2028 standards, the equipment-condition angle is worth checking now: a davit, ladder, or accommodation ladder that's started to degrade doesn't stop being used just because it's degrading — it tends to get worked around instead, which is exactly the failure mode the new performance standards are designed to close off at the manufacturing and maintenance stage, and exactly what a recent MAIB investigation found behind a fatal fall from a bulk carrier's pilot ladder. Checking your own vessel's pilot transfer equipment against what's coming is a cheaper fix than waiting for a survey — or an incident — to find the gap.

Test Your Knowledge

Think you've got this covered? Put it to the test in Crew Connect's free Knowledge Checker — try a quick safety round and see how you score.

Related Reading

• MV World Prize — a fatal fall from a pilot ladder that had quietly become unfit for use
• Portable Fire Extinguishers — another cross-rank technical reference