At least to my knowledge which is based almost entirely on the Caribbean and US east coast ports, pilots give advice to the captain or person handling the ship on local conditions - they do not actually "have the conn" or act as helmsman. Having the pilot always should be safer because they know or should know local conditions that can change or are uncharted and have experience in how to handle the conditions. Had a pilot been on board the Concordia at the time, he presumably would have advised the captain about the fact that there was a large rock in the way. This particular captain seems such an idiot that perhpas he would have ignored any advice, anyway. Before this happened, I would have said that an incident of this type could never happen with the type of people entrusted with such a ship - I still cannot believe that any of the captains I have met in the last few years on RC ships would ever do such a thing - but people are people and you just never can predict with 100% accuracy how stupid they might act.