The use of means of maritime or air transportation, regardless of dimension and usage, cannot take place without crew and without a ‘command’ in force. Crew members and captain in command are inseparable: crew members are the specialised personnel servicing the ship or the aircraft, and making operations possible; equally essential is the ‘command’, fundamental for a ship or an aircraft. Neither the one nor the other, in fact, can function as means of transportation by sea or air (Art.s 136 and 743, Navigation Code) without crew members and ‘captain in command’1. On this basis, it is clear that the ‘command’ has its objective role in the actual navigation ‘exercise’: laws are designed with reference to the space-time dimension of the trip, where the institution of the command and the captain functions come into play.
In the Navigation Code of 1942, the discipline of a Captain in Command – also pilot-in-command – of an aircraft is patterned after the Commander of a ship2. This was, when the Navigation Code was drafted, a choice influenced by the consolidated experience gained with the role linked to sea transportation, thanks to a centuries-old tradition and known in other jurisdictions. Powers and duties of a Master of a ship, in fact, were well outlined in the Commercial Code of 1865 (Art.s 496-500) and in the Code of Merchant Navy of 1877 (Art.s 57-65, 105-114). This is the deriving genetic bond that binds the Captain in Command of an aircraft to the one of a ship. Both figures governed by the Navigation Code, are quite distinct one from the other, and each is described separately. Reference is made to Art. 292 through to 315 in the first part (book II, heading III, paragraph IV), and to Arts no. 883 through to 894, in the second part (book II, heading III, paragraph III) of the Navigation Code, describing, respectively the command of a ship and that of an aircraft. With respect to the maritime sector, Art. 292 of the Navigation Code states that ‘the command of a ship can only be entrusted to a person holding the prescribed qualification’.