OceanGate’s former operations director says maker of ill-fated Titan submersible was ‘all smoke and mirrors’

(CNN) — David Lochridge, a former director of marine exploration for OceanGate who expressed safety concerns about the ill-fated Titan submersible, said Tuesday that company culture was centered on “making money” and “very little in the way of science.”

Testifying on the second day of a US Coast Guard body probing the vessel’s implosion in June 2023, which killed all five people on board, Lochridge said his responsibility was to ensure the safety of all crew, clients and training pilots but that he felt more “like a show pony” because no one else was qualified as a pilot.

“It was all smoke and mirrors,” he said of the way the company operated. “All the social media that you see about all these past expeditions. They always had issues with their expeditions.”

The Titan submersible sent its final message just six seconds before it lost contact with the surface during its dive to the Titanic, according to testimony on the first day of a two-week hearing held by the Marine Board of Investigation tasked with reviewing the tragedy. The mother ship, the Polar Prince, then lost track of the vessel.

A lawsuit by the family of one of the victims has claimed the message, sent about 90 minutes into the vessel’s dive, was an indication the crew might have known something was wrong and were trying to abort the mission.

CNN has reached out to OceanGate for comment on Tuesday’s testimony.

Lochridge described a 2018 report in which he expressed safety concerns over OceanGate operations and said that “there was no way I was signing off on this.” He said he had “no confidence whatsoever” in the construction of the submersible.

But Lochridge said leadership dismissed his concerns, choosing instead to focus completing the Titanic mission as soon as possible.

“Anytime I would give my displeasure about what was happening, my disapproval – that’s probably the best word … I was dismissed,” he said Tuesday. “Everybody knew from the engineering team, I mean I spoke to every single one of them, all these children coming straight out of the university, some hadn’t even been to the university yet … None of them were experienced submersible operators. There was no experience across the board within that organization.”

His testimony before the Marine Board of Investigation came a day after former employees of OceanGate – the company based in Everett, Washington that developed and operated the 23,000-pound submersible, charging about $250,000 per ticket. The company has faced mounting scrutiny of its operations amid reports of safety concerns. Former employees painted a picture of a company that cut corners in its haste to embark on missions with a poorly designed submersible.

“They wanted to be able to qualify a pilot in a day, someone who had never sat in a submersible. They wanted people to basically come in, get checked out as pilots and be able to take passengers down in the sub,” said Lochridge, who said he was eventually fired in 2018 after raising the alarm over safety issues.

He added, “Anytime you’re going in a sub, the most important thing is going home safe to your families, not going on making money and pushing the envelope. … Don’t take risks that are unnecessary with faulty – and I mean faulty, deficient equipment.”

The Marine Board of Investigation, the highest level of inquiry by the Coast Guard, was convened within days of the submersible’s disappearance and tasked with reviewing the cause of the tragedy and offering recommendations, including about potential civil penalties and criminal prosecution .

The submersible lost contact with its mother ship during its dive to the Titanic on June 18, 2023. When it failed to resurface, an international search and rescue mission unfolded in the remote waters several hundred miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada.

Ultimately, authorities concluded the vessel had suffered a “catastrophic implosion” – a sudden inward collapse caused by immense pressure. Debris from the submersible was found on the sea floor several hundred yards from the Titanic, and authorities recovered “presumed human remains” believed to belong to the victims.

Stockton Rush, the founder and CEO of the vessel’s operator; businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood; businessman Hamish Harding; and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet were all killed.

When the investigation is complete, the US Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board will each conduct an independent analysis and complete reports, said Jason Neubauer, the chair of the Marine Board of Investigation. He cautioned additional hearings could be held in the future, and he would not provide an estimated timeline for the conclusion of the investigation.

CNN’s Dakin Andone and Cindy Von Quednow contributed to this report.

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