Scores of former passengers who have ridden on board the Titan, the submersible that disappeared Sunday with five on board while en route to the wreckage site of the Titanic, have described in detail the chilling flaws they encountered during their trips—with one passenger calling the voyage a “suicide mission.”
Nearly all former passengers spoke of electrical and communication failures—jarring issues that ex-passenger Mike Reiss described as a common occurrence on dives by OceanGate, the company that operates the missing submersible.
“Every time they lost communication—that seems to be just something baked into the system," Reiss told ABC News.
ADVERTISEMENT
Reiss, the showrunner for The Simpsons, completed four tours with OceanGate, including one to the site of the Titanic. He said his submersible lost contact with the host ship on every dive, just as the Titan did on Sunday afternoon less than two hours into its ill-fated trip.
Others echoed similar horror stories in their dive to the ocean’s bottom. Arthur Loibl, 60, said he was “incredibly lucky” to survive his dive on Titan back in 2021.
Loibl, a wealthy German adventurist, told Bild the submersible he was scheduled to dive with initially became inoperable. Then, once aboard the Titan, a second attempted dive was abandoned at 1,600 meters because of equipment failures and electrical problems.
Loibl said he eventually began his successful dive five hours behind schedule, but said the ordeal was the most terrifying experience of his life—topping grueling treks he made to the north and south poles.
“It was a suicide mission back then,” Loibl said.
Arthur Loibl, a former passenger on the Titan, stands in his house with a tablet showing a photo of the Titanic. In 2021, he was one of the first passengers to descend to the Titanic in a mini-submarine operated by Oceangate Expeditions.
Photo by Armin Weigel/picture alliance via Getty ImagesAlan Estrada, a Mexican actor, spoke in a YouTube video about the fears he experienced on a July 2022 voyage aboard Titan. He said the trip was cut short due to a battery failure—slashing his time at the wreckage site to approximately an hour, a far cry from the four hours initially promised. Along the way, he said the Titan lost communication with its host ship for hours.
“My biggest concern was obviously losing my life,” Estrada told the Daily Mail. “All the people who made this expedition… we are aware of the risks we are taking. It’s not a surprise.”
Estrada said he paid $125,000 for the trip—half the price paid by those who embarked on Sunday’s dive.
The approximately 10-hour trip has been described as hellish even on the occasions where all things go right. Loibl recalled having to sit “cross-legged” for the entirety of his voyage in near-freezing temperatures.
Alfred Hagen, an explorer and filmmaker who took two trips on Titan in 2021 and 2022, told the Los Angeles Times that passengers’ feet could freeze if they sat too close to the submersible’s single porthole. And there was no room for standing inside Titan, which measures nine feet wide and eight feet tall.
Hagen recalled the cold getting to French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet—who’s confirmed to be on the Titan’s most recent dive—on their voyage together. Hagen said he’s devastated he never sent Nargeolet a pair of UGG-branded boots to keep him warm on dives.
“All I can think about over and over again is that I meant to send him a pair of those Uggs and I never got around to it and I’m torturing myself every day,” Hagen said. “He could have suffered less and died maybe with his feet warm.”
Others who have journeyed aboard Titan to the Titanic wreck site told The Daily Beast it was “inappropriate” to speak about their experiences while rescue operations remained active.
“Anyone who is not actively involved with the current situation is not in a position to offer responsible comment or speculation,” said Chelsea Kellogg, who was on a 2022 Titan expedition.
And Prof. Murray Roberts, a marine biology instructor at the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences who is one of several experts who accompany Titan passengers on wreck dives, said in a text that he is not granting any interviews “during this difficult time.”
Shocking details about the Titan and OceanGate have emerged this week. That included the surfacing of comments from the company’s founder, Stockton Rush, bemoaning regulations and calling safety efforts a “pure waste.” Rush is believed to have been on board Titan’s most recent dive.
“I mean if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed, don’t get in your car, don’t do anything,” Rush told CBS News in a podcast last year. “At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question.”
Flaws with the Titan, like its lack of a basic locator beacon and failed safety checks, became widely reported for the first time this week. Possible leadership failures also emerged, with The Daily Beast revealing that Rush was sued for fraud by a Florida couple who claim they paid for a Titanic voyage but never received one.
The sketchiness of Rush’s operation was enough to put off at least one potential passenger for Sunday’s trip, who surrendered an $88,000 deposit to steer clear of the Titan.
“We decided the risks were too high in this instance, even though I’m not one to shy away from risk,” Chris Brown, 61, told The Sun this week. “Eventually I emailed them and said, ‘I’m no longer able to go on this thing.’ I asked for a refund after being less than convinced.”
While many deep-diving horror stories that emerged this week came from trips aboard the Titan, others shared equally chilling tales from other submersibles—highlighting why trips that traverse miles below the ocean’s surface are so rare.
Michael Guillen, a former ABC News correspondent, said the Titan’s disappearance has brought back foul memories of his own near-death experience in a dive to the Titanic’s wreckage site.
Guillen was the first journalist to report from the Titanic’s wreckage site in 2000. While there, however, an unexpected underwater current pushed his vessel into a propeller of the sunken liner, where they became briefly stuck.
“This voice came into my head and said, you know, ‘This is how it’s going to end for you,’” Guillen recalled to ABC News this week. “I’ll never forget those words. I’m very aware of what these poor souls on board the ship the Titan are experiencing. I am just heartbroken about it.”
