"It is human error here," Costa Chairman and CEO Pier Luigi Foschi told reporters dialed into a conference call Monday morning. "The captain did not follow the authorized route that is used by Costa ships very frequently."  Rescue operations were halted for a time Monday after the Costa Concordia shifted in rough seas and fears mounted that any further shifts could cause some of the 500,000 gallons of fuel on board to leak into the pristine waters off the island of Giglio that are a protected dolphin sanctuary.  The partially sunken liner slipped further into the sea during high winds and is now lying on its side in about 45 feet of water.  There are new fears that the vessel could break completely free from its rocky ledge at any moment and plummet hundreds of feet to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, and if it shifts again it could puncture its fuel tanks.  The confirmed death toll rose to six after searchers found the body of a male passenger wearing a life vest in the corridor of the above-water portion of the ship. Twennty-nine people are unaccounted for, including two American passengers. Retiree Jerry Heil, 69, and his wife, Barbara, 70, of White Bear Lake, a St. Paul, Minn., suburb, have not been seen since the ship ran aground, the Heil family said.  Chances that they would be found alive three days after the ship was speared by the reef and toppled to one side grew slimmer.  The Concordia's captain, Francesco Schettino, was arrested and jailed early Saturday, a few hours after Friday's night shipwreck a few yards off Giglio, a tiny island of fishermen and tourist hotels near the Tuscan coast in west central Italy.  Prosecutors who are investigating the captain in connection with manslaughter, abandoning ship and causing a shipwreck stepped up their scathing criticism of his conduct.  "We are struck by the unscrupulousness of the reckless maneuver that the commander of the Costa Concordia made near the island of Giglio," prosecutor Francesco Verusio told reporters. "It was inexcusable."  A judge on Tuesday is expected to decide whether the captain should be charged and remain jailed in Grosseto on the mainland.  Foschi said Monday that Costa ships travel the passage near where the ship ran into rocks on Friday more than 100 times a year but always stay farther out to sea. There has been only one other time when a Costa ship has traveled close to the island of Giglio, where it ran aground, he said, and that was in August 2011 to view a celebration. In that case, the maneuver near the island was authorized and the ship stayed a safe distance from shore.  When asked whether he knew why the captain had taken the ship off course, Foschi suggested that the 10-year veteran of the company wanted to show off the ship to the port area of Giglio that it was passing.  "He decided to change the course of the ship to go closer to the island and pass in front of the little city that sits on that island," Foschi said. "This is what he wanted to do."  Verusio said "there was someone in particular that wanted to be signalled from the ship."  Foschi suggested other officers and crewmembers of the ship didn't interfere with the captain's decision because it was not their place.  "The captain has the authority by law to take (a) decision on board," he said. "In this particular case the captain decided to change the route, and he went into water he did not know."  Foschi said the captain was on the bridge of the ship at the time of the accident along with several other crewmembers. Despite reports the captain was drinking at dinner before the wreck, Foschi said he didn't think the captain drank. He noted Costa ship crews undergo random tests for drug and alcohol use.  Foschi said the company is unable to give a timeline of what took place after that because Italian prosecutors have seized the ship's data recorders and other resources that would allow it to piece together a sequence of events.  "We have no access at this point to all the information that would let us understand correctly what happened," he said. "It is in the hands of the prosecutor who is conducting the formal investigation."  Foschi said the company is doing everything it can to account for and take care of every passenger and crewmember who was on the ship, and it's also focused on the environmental issues involved in the sinking. So far, he said, no fuel oil has spilled from the vessel.  "So far, there have not been environmental impacts, but we are very concerned to what will happen in the future," he said.  Foschi defended the ship's crewmembers, whom some passengers have accused of not responding quickly during the emergency. He said that the line rigorously trains its staff for emergencies, holding lifeboat drills for crew every other week across its fleet.  "The crew performed very well," he said. "We were able to evacuate in two hours time 4,200 people under very severe circumstances."  The ship listed sharply during the emergency, making it impossible to deploy lifeboats from both sides of the ship, Foschi said. It was a turn of events that created "a very difficult situation," he said.  Foschi also addressed criticism that the ship had not held a lifeboat drill for passengers after departing from Civitavecchia, the port for Rome, earlier in the day. He said the line follows U.S. Coast Guard and International Maritime Organization rules that drills must take place within 24 hours of departing, and a drill had been scheduled for the day after departure. The accident happened just 3½ hours after departing, he said.  Foschi also said that the ship had embarked many of its passengers at ports that came before Civitavecchia on the line's schedule, and all of those people had been put through lifeboat drills days earlier. He said only 696 of the 3,206 passengers on board the ship at the time of the accident had boarded for the first time in Civitavecchia and thus had not undergone a drill.  Still, Foschi said the company would review its policy of when to hold lifeboat drills.  Survivors say the scene was eerily evocative of the Titanic, which struck an iceberg and sank a century ago this April.  "Have you seen Titanic? That's exactly what it was," said Valerie Ananias, 31, a schoolteacher from Los Angeles who was traveling with her sister and parents on the first of two cruises around the Mediterranean.  "We were crawling up a hallway, in the dark, with only the light from the life vest strobe flashing," her mother, Georgia Ananias, 61, said. "We could hear plates and dishes crashing, people slamming against walls."  The parent company of Costa Cruises says the partial sinking of the Costa Concordia could cost it nearly $100 million in lost earnings this year.  In a disclosure required by rules governing publicly traded companies, industry giant Carnival Corp. said Monday that the impact to 2012 earnings for loss of use of the ship is expected to be approximately $85 million-$95 million or $0.11-$0.12 per share.  "A damage assessment review of the vessel is currently being undertaken to determine how long it will be out of service," the Miami-based company said in the disclosure. But "the vessel is expected to be out of service for the remainder of our current fiscal year if not longer."  Carnival's fiscal year ends on Nov. 30.  In addition to loss of use of the vessel, Carnival faces costs associated with personal injury liability related to the accident and the cost of damage to the ship. The company said it has insurance coverage for damage to the vessel with a deductible of approximately $30 million as well as insurance for third party personal injury liability subject to an additional deductible of approximately $10 million for the incident.  The company said it also faces additional costs from the accident that "are not possible to determine at this time."  Carnival Corp.zis the world's largest cruise company with more than 100 vessels spread among nearly a dozen brands including Carnival, Costa, Princess, Holland America and Cunard.  In a statement accompanying the disclosure, Carnival Corp. Chairman and CEO Micky Arison said the company's priority is the safety of its passengers and crew.  "We are deeply saddened by this tragic event and our hearts go out to everyone affected by the grounding of the Costa Concordia and especially to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives," he said. "They will remain in our thoughts and prayers."  Chris McKesson, adjunct professor at the University of New Orleans' school of naval architecture and marine engineering, said attempting to salvage the ship would rely on pumping out the oil, patching the holes in the hull and standing the ship back upright. While difficult, he said it would probably be worth salvaging a ship worth a reported $600 million.  "My guess is that they'll take her home, rebuild her and she'll sail again," McKesson said.  Many veteran cruise sellers are bracing for a drop in bookings in the wake of Friday's deadly accident.  Foschi acknowledged the accident could impact cruise bookings.  "I would believe that unfortunately particularly for Costa but not only for Costa there will be some little downturn," he said. "But I don't expect it last too long. The industry is extremely safe, and the customer knows that."  "It's hard to see the industry not experiencing at least a small short-term slowdown from this," Florida-based Simon Duvall of SimonCruises.com tells USA TODAY. "The images and stories coming out of Italy are shocking even to those of us who love cruising and consider it safe, so to a first-timer or someone who is nervous about it, (this) very well might be a deal breaker."  Longtime cruise seller Amber Blecker of CruiseOne in Aurora, Colo., agrees, saying she has no doubt the disaster will have an effect on bookings.  "During the time this is a top story and the pictures on the news are non-stop, questions fresh and answers unresolved, new bookings will likely be quieter," she says.  Blecker says she already has heard from long-term clients who have told her they've been discussing already-booked cruises with their families in the wake of the incident. The clients still plan to go, but "the fact they took the time to write indicated cancellation was at least a possibility."  Blecker, like Duvall, expects the impact of the incident on business to be short term — maybe just a few weeks. That's been the pattern with high-profile cruise ship accidents in the past. Still, others aren't so sure.  "There are so many elements in play here that are unprecedented in modern-day cruise ship annals that it makes predictions difficult," says Mike Driscoll, editor of a publication for cruise-selling agents called Cruise Week.  For starters, says Driscoll, January is one of the busiest booking times of the year for the cruise industry, part of a critical period known as Wave Season, so "the timing isn't good."  Ratings agency S&P on Sunday also cited the timing of the accident in a bulletin that said the 2012 financial performance of industry giant Carnival Corp. would be negatively impacted by the loss of the Costa Concordia.  In addition to the costs to Costa associated with the accident and for amending and refunding future cruises on the ship, "there is the potential that this event could weigh on booking trends across other cruise brands … given the fact that it occurred early in the Wave season," the S&P bulletin says.  Until this week, S&P had been expecting modest growth in the cruise industry this year. It's now considering a scenario where net revenue yields — a measure of how much money cruise lines make per berth — are knocked down industrywide by 3 percentage points.  Driscoll notes that travel agents will be reminding customers worried by the accident that such events are a rarity, the message being millions cruise safely every year. If bookings do slow, he says, inevitably "prices will drop and agents are confident (the allure of vacation deals) will outweigh any safety concerns most consumers have, particularly given the scant odds of this happening on their own trip."  Such a scenario is not without precedent. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that resulted in four airplane crashes, low fares eventually lured skittish fliers back into the sky, notes Driscoll.  Many agents say the accident is going to hurt Costa's bookings, in particular. "They cite the handling as one reason, the perception being that the crew mishandled this from the get-go," Driscoll says.  Driscoll notes that, right or wrong, the media are awash this week in stories and videos that leave the impression that the ship's crew reacted poorly or even irresponsibly during the event — not the sort of impression that builds confidence among consumers in a vacation product.  Driscoll points to the contrast between Costa's response to the accident and the way its sister line Carnival handled a fire in late 2010 on the Carnival Splendor. In that case, nobody was killed, but the vessel was left adrift without power for days.  Carnival "acted immediately to minimize the collateral damage (from the Splendor incident), not only with the media, but with passengers," Driscoll says. "It was managed very well to the point when people getting off the ship were interviewed, many were thanking Carnival for their handling. This, in contrast, is seen as a total mess."  Several travel agents told USA TODAY they expect changes in the cruise industry in the wake of the Costa accident, including new rules to require muster drills before a cruise ship leaves port. Under current U.S. Coast Guard rules and the Safety of Life at Sea regulations issued by the International Maritime Organization, cruise ships are not required to conduct a safety drill at the start of a voyage but must do so within 24 hours of sailing.  Not all travel agents are expecting a bookings slowdown. Chuck Flagg of The Flagg Agency, a Cruise Holidays franchise in Canton, Ga., notes that people continue to fly and book flights in the wake of plane crashes.  "I am personally not seeing any slowdowns or cancellations," Flagg says. "In fact, I received a cruise request (Saturday) afternoon from a first-time cruiser. For most people this is akin to the news of a plane accident. People still continue to fly, and people will continue to cruise."  Blecker and Duvall, too, say they have yet to see a slowdown in bookings or inquiries.  "I did have a question from a client about the availability of life vests on board the ship for her toddlers, so it's on people's minds," Duvall says. "But veteran cruisers know it's going to be a safe experience and aren't going to be deterred by something like this."  Mike Eidson, a Miami lawyer and former head of Association of Trial Lawyers of America, cited three reasons a shipping company would distance itself from its captain, as has happened in the Italian cruise-ship disaster. One is to protect the company's business reputation, another is to avoid criminal liability and the third is to limit punitive damages from a lawsuit, he said.  "This is worse than the Titanic - it's an outrageous thing," said Eidson, who headed the wrongful death case against Ford and Firestone for rollover accidents. "Back in the Titanic, they didn't know the iceberg was there. Today they know the rock is there."  Foschi acknowledged that lawsuits may be filed against the company, but that the company would try to talk with whoever brings a case.  "Costa cannot prevent any lawsuit against us," Foschi said. "But if that is the case, we will analyze the case and respond."
The captain of the cruise ship that capsized off Tuscany made an unauthorized deviation from the ship's programmed course, the CEO said.