SEATTLE (AP) — The company whose submersible vanished in the North Atlantic on a tourist dive to the wreck of the Titanic was repeatedly warned that there might be “catastrophic” safety problems with the venture, documents show.
SEATTLE The company whose submersible vanished in the North Atlantic on a tourist dive to the wreck of the Titanic was repeatedly warned that there might be “catastrophic” safety problems with the venture, documents show.
With five people aboard a vessel that if still functioning would have a dwindling amount of oxygen remaining, an expanding international fleet of ships and airplanes is searching for the Titan, operated by OceanGate Expeditions. The undersea exploration company based in Everett, Washington, has been making yearly voyages to the Titanic since 2021.
In the first piece of good news since the search began, a Canadian aircraft detected underwater noises, though the vessel has not been found, the U.S. Coast Guard reported early Wednesday.
David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations, wrote an engineering report in 2018 that said the craft under development needed more testing and that passengers might be endangered when it reached “extreme depths,” according to a lawsuit filed that year in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
OceanGate sued Lochridge that year, accusing him of breaching a non-disclosure agreement, and he filed a counterclaim alleging that he was wrongfully fired for raising questions about testing and safety.
