PBOT says it will continue to issue permits to companies that qualify under the pilot rules.
The prosecutors might not need Mr. Gansas to establish that the two-pilot rule was widely ignored.
Mr. Ryan's lawyer, William Fitzpatrick, reiterated his client's contention that he had distributed copies of the two-pilot rule to crews.
The indictment against him says that the two-pilot rule, in existence since 1958, was reissued in 1977 and most recently in 1988.
But he could be damaging to Mr. Ryan's defense if Mr. Ryan's lawyers argue that Mr. Gansas knew about the two-pilot rule and ignored it.
Prosecutors decided that Mr. Gansas, who was fired after the crash, was not responsible for being in the wheelhouse because the two-pilot rule was not being enforced.
The city's former director of ferry operations, Patrick Ryan, pleaded guilty to seaman's manslaughter in April 2005 for failing to enforce the two-pilot rule; he was sentenced to a year in prison.
Ms. Mauskopf was scathing yesterday in her criticism of Mr. Ryan, saying his lapses included a failure to enforce the two-pilot rule, a longstanding policy that she says could have prevented the crash.
"We feel confident that the inaction of the city in educating and training its crew members on the two-pilot rule was a direct cause of this tragedy," he said.
The two-pilot rule became crucial on the day of the accident because of what happened to Mr. Smith, who lost consciousness as he was guiding the Barberi into the Staten Island terminal, causing the ship to crash into a concrete maintenance pier.
Following the analysis in Appendix we define the following piloting rule: if the transmitters in a JCMA setting use all their available power, decoding gain and faster key generating rate are obtained at the expense of higher energy consumption.
