A passenger on the doomed Titan submarine claimed travellers weren't informed about emergency procedures because they'd "all be dead before we know it," it is claimed.
Arnie Weissmann, editor-in-chief of Travel Weekly, spent eight days onboard the submersible's support ship - Polar Prince - in May with deep-sea explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet and other Titan personnel.
Nargeolet was one of the five people who died when the Titan was destroyed in an implosion during an expedition to the Titanic wreck on June 18.
Bad weather would ultimately cancel the scheduled trip Weissmann was to take on the Titan submersible. But according to the journalist, would be passengers were only informed about how the sub "goes down and up."
"To be honest, there was not really any training. And even when I went in and did visit the sub on the last day, the inside being just a flat floor, actually surprised me," Weissmann explained to Insider.
"I had a conversation with PH and he said 'look if there's a structural issue, we will all be dead before we know it.' He said it laughing with a smile that was a reassurance of sorts, I guess."
The sentiment was one shared by OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush to another passenger back in May 2021. When cameraman Brian Weed inquired about the possibility of an emergency, Rush said "well, you're dead anyway."
According to Weissmann, additional instructions may have been given to mission specialists in the event of a dive. When on the deck of the platform, would-be passengers were instructed to wear flight suits and steel-toed footwear when on the deck or the platform.
"The actual training was they handed you a flight suit and some warm socks and a kind of fleece vest," Weissmann explained. "They said basically, 'it'll be cold down there' ... the list they sent you said to bring two pairs of warm socks."
Had the dive occurred, Weissmann would have been tasked with moving some ballast pipes that weigh roughly 37 pounds each.
"They're just old rusty pipes that they had acquired somewhere and they were nothing fancy because they were going to be left on the ocean floor," he said. "I had been told that there had been an issue, where after dropping the ballast, it still didn't rise."
The comment comes after it has been revealed that of the 90 attempts to reach the depth of the Titanic wreck, the Titan only managed to succeed 13 times, which adds up to a success rate of about 14%.
The detail is written in a waiver passengers had to sign prior to boarding the craft for the pricey expedition, which could cost as much as $100,0000.
