Faulty engineering led to deadly Titan sub implosion, US investigators rule | Titanic sub incident
The fatal explosion of a submarine heading toward the wreckage of the Titanic was the result of faulty engineering, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced Wednesday.
In the NTSB’s final report on the voyage that killed five people in June 2023, it was stated that OceanGate, the private company that owns Titan, did not adequately test its experimental submarine before the voyage. The report stated that the Washington state-based company, which suspended its operations after the devastating explosion, was unaware of the true durability of the submarine.
The victims, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, died instantly in the North Atlantic during descent into the ruins of the Titanic.
The explosion also killed French underwater explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, known as “Mr. Titanic”; British adventurer Hamish Harding; and two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and her son Suleiman Dawood.
The NTSB said Titan’s flawed engineering “resulted in a carbon fiber composite pressure vessel construction that contained multiple anomalies and failed to meet required strength and durability requirements.”
The safety board also said OceanGate did not follow standard guidelines for emergency responses and that Titan could have been found sooner if it had. While the report stated that “time and resources” would be saved if the company complied with the expected protocols, it was stated that “rescue is not possible in this case.”
The report also criticized company culture and cited a former operations technician who raised the alarm about possible Coast Guard regulations before the explosion. The technician questioned the company’s choice to call paying passengers “mission specialists,” prompting the CEO to respond that “if the Coast Guard becomes a problem…he’ll buy himself a congressman and eliminate him,” the report said, citing the technician.
The NTSB report dovetails with a Coast Guard report released in August that said the explosion on Titan was preventable. The Coast Guard determined that security procedures at OceanGate, based in Washington state, were “critically flawed” and found “glaring disparities” between security protocols and actual practices.
A spokesman for the company declined to comment Wednesday.
After the Coast Guard report was released in August, a company spokesman expressed condolences to the families of those killed.
Titan’s explosion has sparked lawsuits and calls for tighter regulation of private deep-sea expeditions.
The NTSB report argued that current regulations for small cruise ships like the Titan are inadequate and “allow OceanGate to operate the Titan in an unsafe manner.” The safety board recommended that the Coast Guard create a panel of experts to examine submarines and enforce updated regulations.
The report also called on the Coast Guard to “disseminate the findings of the study to the industry”; this has increased in recent years with the rise of privately funded exploration.
The ship had been traveling to the Titanic area since 2021. His last dive took place on the morning of June 18, 2023. The submarine lost contact with the support ship about two hours later and was reported overdue in the afternoon.
A several-day search for survivors off the coast of Canada made international headlines. It soon became clear that there would be no survivors, and the Coast Guard and other authorities began lengthy investigations into what had happened.
The sub-disaster was the subject of a Netflix documentary released earlier this year.
