A SERIES of crucial blunders were made before a submersible carrying five people vanished on a trip to see the Titanic wreckage.
Rescue teams are in a race against the clock to find the lost vessel - which has just hours of oxygen left on board.
Contact was lost with the £200,000-a-head voyage, run by OceanGate, on Sunday as made its way to the ruins of the Titanic - which sits 12,500ft under the water.
But amid the harrowing disappearance, at least seven problems and blunders appear to have been overlooked.
In a haunting interview before the vessel became lost, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush - who is on board - claimed there should be "limits" to safety precautions.
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He told CBS just last year: "You know, at some point, safety is just a pure waste.
"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. At some point, you're going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question.
"I think I can do this just as safely while breaking the rules."
Here we take a look at all of the problems and blunders made before the sub vanished.
1. Long delay in raising alarm
Titan lost contact with its mother ship less than two hours into its expedition - yet Oceangate failed to alert authorities until eight hours after.
It's understood the Polar Prince, carrying the Titan, set sail from St John's in Newfoundland early on Sunday morning.
Just one hour and 45 minutes into the expedition the submarine lost contact with the transport vessel.
Panic erupted as the sub did not reemerge as it was expected to on Sunday afternoon.
However, the US Coast Guard was not alerted until eight hours after the vessel lost communication.
There are five people on board the sub - British billionaire Hamish Harding, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, British-based Pakistani tycoon Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, and French diving expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
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2. Lawsuit over sub's safety
It's been revealed that OceanGate was involved in a huge lawsuit over fears about the sub’s safety.
Ex-employee David Lochridge claims he was fired after he raised his concerns and demanded more rigorous safety checks be put in place on the submissible.
Court documents, seen by The Sun, said he complained that the vessel was not capable of descending to the extreme depths necessary to view the Titanic wreckage.
The Legal files show OceanGate sued Lochridge, who was “responsible for the safety of all crew and clients”, for disclosing confidential information about the Titan.
However, Lochridge then filed a counterclaim - alleging that he had been wrongfully fired from his role over being a whistleblower about the quality and safety of the vessel.
In November 2018 the case settled out of court.
3. Chilling disappearance last year
An ex-passenger who embarked on the voyage to see the wreckage said the vessel was “lost” because of bad weather last summer.
Passengers on the trip, including CBS Sunday Morning reporter David Pogue, never had the chance to see the shipwreck after they lost communication with the surface ship.
In the resurfaced clip of the expedition, Pogue says: "There's no GPS underwater, so the surface ship is supposed to guide the ship to the shipwreck by sending text messages.
“But on this dive, communication somehow broke down. The sub never found the wreck."
In the CBS clip, investment firm CEO Shrenik Baldota - who was on the 2022 voyage - can be heard saying: "We were lost. We were lost for two and a half hours."
4. Steered by gaming controller
The cramped carbon-fibre sub - which is just 22ft long and 9ft wide - is bizarrely steered by a gaming controller.
It was made by OceanGate Expeditions and has only one porthole at the front.
The deep-sea sub does not have its own GPS system and is instead guided by text messages exchanged using an acoustic system with a team waiting helplessly above water.
Strange footage from inside the vessel reveals that is all unusually run by an Xbox-style controller and can mostly be operated using only one button.
Pogue travelled onboard the Titan last year and shared his concerns over some components of the sub seemed that "off-the shelf, sort of improvised".
He told the BBC: "You steer this sub with an Xbox game controller [and] some of the ballast is [built from] abandoned construction pipes."
And the inside lighting was bought from a camping shop.
He also explained that there is "no way" to communicate with the mini-van size vessel, nor can anyone inside the sub escape without external help.
Passengers are sealed within the main cabin by hefty bolts secured from the outside and have to be removed using external crew.
Pogue added: "There's no backup, there's no escape pod.
"It's get to the surface or die."
5. No emergency distress beacon
Pogue has also revealed that while the vessel was lost last year he questioned the company's emergency system.
He said the surface vessel was not carrying a distress beacon - which is activated by boaters in emergency situations.
When activated it alerts a worldwide Search and Rescue (SAR) network designed to send rescuers to the boat's exact location quickly.
Pogue said: "This submersible does not have any kind of beacon like that.
"On my expedition last summer they did indeed get lost and adding such a beacon was discussed."
6. Sub not regulated
The sub-operators in the past have explained that the Titan "had not been approved by any regulatory body".
Tourists fork out almost £200,000 to take part in the expedition - but must sign a contract before boarding.
Passengers are made to acknowledge that the submarine is “an experimental vessel”.
The chilling contract also states that their trip “could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death”.
7. Haunting accounts of ex passengers
Previous guests and journalists who risked their lives to make the trip have told tales of radio failures and flickering lights while on board the Titan.
Mike Reiss, who works on the classic US TV animated show The Simpsons, made the trip last year on the sub and said communication failures were common.
He said: “I have taken three different dives with this company, one at the Titanic and two others and you almost always lost communication — and you are at the mercy of weather.”
Renata Rojas, a banker who visited the wreckage last July, described what happened when sonar failed during her trip.
She said: “You have to find a way to communicate and navigate in the bottom of the ocean.
“Sometimes you don’t have communications, you have maybe just one system instead of all three.
“Some of the lights may flicker. The battery might be low and you need to go to the surface.”
