KiwiRail grilling to continue with release of report into Cook Strait ferry's power loss

Friday, 5 May 2023

KiwiRail chief executive Peter Reidy, left, and chief capital planning and asset development officer David Gordon appear before the Transport Select Committee in Parliament to answer questions about Wellington’s commuter chaos.

A week of intense scrutiny continues for KiwiRail, with an interim report due on how a Cook Strait ferry lost power and came dangerously close to grounding.

It follows a questioning of senior managers on Thursday at Parliament over the capital’s train crisis during the week.

On Friday, the Transport Accident Investigation Commission will release its findings into one aspect of the incident that led up to Kaitaki’s mayday call on Saturday, January 28.

The tugs alongside the Kaitaki on the evening it suffered engine failure in Cook Strait.

The Interislander ferry lost power to all four engines while crossing Cook Strait towards Wellington. Strong southerly winds pushed it, with 864 people on board, towards the rugged coastline west of Wellington until anchors held it and engineers restored power.

The commission said ahead of the report that it had identified facts about one aspect of the incident that needed to be brought urgently to the attention of the shipping industry.

While TAIC was conducting a full investigation, it had decided to also publish a short preliminary report in the interests of transport safety.

A final report would be issued once the investigation was complete.

On January 28, KiwiRail contacted Maritime NZ, to say the Kaitaki had engine trouble at 4.55pm, and the official mayday call was sent out 10 minutes later.

Maritimetraffic.com's ship tracking data shows how close the Kaitaki drifted towards the south coast on January 28.

All four engines had failed. The ship’s captain managed to drop anchors and stop the 22,365-tonne, 181-metre ship – built in 1995 – being forced to the coast.

As the Kaitaki drifted a nautical mile, a big rescue effort was activated, involving five helicopters, a flotilla of boats, land search and rescuers, and other emergency services.

Kaitaki in port in Wellington after the incident in January.

Engineers eventually got the engines started and the ship, shadowed by tug boats and the police launch, limped to Wellington under its own steam. It arrived at dock about 9pm, more than 3 hours behind schedule.

KiwiRail has also had problems on dry land.

Wellington train commuters struggled to get into and out of the capital this week due to significantly reduced train capacity, as KiwiRail scrambled to complete vital checks of the region’s tracks.

Metlink was forced to rush out the reduced timetables after KiwiRail announced its only rail inspection car was broken in Auckland, leading to a 70kph blanket speed reductions starting on Monday as Wellington’s train line inspections became overdue.

On Thursday, KiwiRail bosses told a select committee that a simple message that could have stopped Wellington’s train crisis failed to reach senior managers until it was too late to fix.

KiwiRail chief executive Peter Reidy, chief capital planning and asset development officer David Gordon and board chairperson David McLean met with the transport subcommittee on Thursday morning just as Wellington’s trains were finally returning to normal.

KiwRail was supposed to run its track evaluation car every four months on the Wellington network to carry out exact measurements of the tracks to make sure they were safe and comply with engineering standards.

But board chairperson David McLean told the committee this was meant to be done before May – a problem that was known about but, for reasons unknown, the looming issue was not raised with bosses until last Wednesday.

”We let the people of Wellington down,” he said.

Earlier, a rapid government review was launched into KiwiRail and officials were called into a ‘’please explain’’ meeting on Monday morning by Transport Minister Michael Wood.