Titan sub had 14 percent success rate, investigation finds
Rhiannon Ingle
Featured Image Credit: Becky Kagan Schott/OceanGate / Sky News
An investigation has found that the Titan sub had a 14 percent success rate.
The US Coast Guard announced the 'catastrophic implosion' of the Titan vessel last month, after debris was discovered near the wreck of the Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
The vessel first lost contact with its mothership on Sunday (18 June), when it went to explore the wreck of the Titanic.
Advert
The implosion ended up killing all five passengers on board.
The individuals on board were OceanGate CEO and co-founder Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, French diver/Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet, and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood.
Following the incident, OceanGate has been at the center of mass criticism with an investigation into the incident now well underway.
Chair captain with the Marine Board of Investigation Jason Neubauer said: "The evidence will provide investigators from several international jurisdictions with critical insights into the cause of this tragedy.
"There is still a substantial amount of work to be done to understand the factors that led to the catastrophic loss of the Titan and help ensure a similar tragedy does not occur again."
Several aspects surrounding the sub's design were reportedly flagged up as potential hazards including the use of carbon fibre for the construction of its hull.
Additionally, in a leaked email, one OceanGate employee even called the submersible an 'accident waiting to happen'.
A former OceanGate employee, Rob McCallum, also previously told Insider that the company's approach to engineering was 'ad hoc' and 'ultimately inappropriate'.
McCallum also once compared the Titan sub's design to a 'home-built go-kart'.
According to an unearthed company passenger waiver, the Titan sub only reached the depth of the wreckage site - which lies at a depth of about 13,000 feet below sea level - on approximately 13 out of 90 dives.
The waiver, signed by a would-be passenger that was reviewed by Insider, stated that the sub only successfully completed 'as few as 13' dives of 3,800 meters to the depth of the Titanic.
This meant that OceanGate, the company which called the Titan sub 'experimental' three times in the four-page liability waiver, may have only completed around 14 percent of its dives to the wreckage site depths.
OceanGate has since suspended business and exploration operations two weeks after five people lost their lives on one of its submersibles.
An announcement on the site currently states: "OceanGate has suspended all exploration and commercial operations."