The Coast Guard issued marine safety alert 09-14 to bring attention to the consequences of failing to consider air draft and to properly calculate a vessel’s vertical clearance under bridges, power lines and other obstructions encountered during a passage.

Air draft is a term used to describe the distance from the top of a vessel’s highest point to its waterline.

View the alert for details on bridge strike statistics, primary cause of casualties and Coast Guard recommendations to avoid these occurrences.

The safety alert was developed by the Towing Vessel National Center of Expertise and the Office of Investigations and Casualty Analysis.

This blog is not a replacement or substitute for the formal posting of regulations and updates or existing processes for receiving formal feedback of the same. Links provided on this blog will direct the reader to official source documents, such as the Federal Register, Homeport and the Code of Federal Regulations. These documents remain the official source for regulatory information published by the Coast Guard.