Titan sub hearings reside: Friend of OceanGate boss who stated Stockton Rush ‘knew it would end like this’ to testify right this moment | EUROtoday

Bay is asked to define “a mission specialist” by the panel and says she would not describe them as “passengers”.

She described a mission specialist as “somebody who was curious about deep sea exploration, who wanted to join, who understood this wasn’t a luxury trip.”

She added: “As Stockton put it, there was no chocolate on the pillow.”

The witness was also quizzed about OceanGate’s finances and how payments from investors were made.

The hearing on Friday heard that Titan’s navigation system allegedly relied on team members manually inputting the coordinate data into a spreadsheet in order to track the vessel.

“There were delays because there was this manual process of first writing down the lat-long coordinates and then typing them in,” Antonella Wilby, a former OceanGate contractor, told the hearing held by the US Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation.

“We tried to do that every five minutes, but it was a lot to do.”

She described the system as “absolutely idiotic”, adding that she had raised concerns about the method with OceanGate but was dismissed for not being “solution-oriented”.

Catch up with Anthony Cuthbertson’s report here.

The first witness, Amber Bay, has been sworn in.

Bay is OceanGate’s former director of administration. She joined OceanGate in 2018.

Stanley is due to give evidence to the hearing this afternoon.

He is the owner of a diving expedition company in Honduras and previously went aboard the Titan off the coast of the Bahamas in 2019, The New York Times first reported.

In emails obtained by Insider of an alleged exchange between the two deep-sea enthusiasts, Stanley told Rush that he had heard a large cracking sound while on the 12,000-foot-deep dive.

“I think that hull has a defect near that flange, that will only get worse. The only question in my mind is will it fail catastrophically or not,” Stanley wrote in a premonitory email, years before the Titan’s catastrophic implosion that killed all five of its passengers.

Catch up on our report from the time.

The investigative panel heard testimony from Guillermo Sohnlein, Roy Thomas and Phil Brooks.

Sohnlein co-founded OceanGate with Stockton Rush in 2009 but left the company in 2013. Despite the panel’s efforts, Sohnlein said the world may never know what led to tragedy.

Thomas, an engineer for the American Bureau of Shipping, one of the main classifying agencies for submersibles, spoke about complications with using carbon fiber materials. After repeated dives, the materials are susceptible to become “deformed” and “fail,” he said, adding OceanGate never tried to seek classification with the agency.

Rush designed the vessel with a carbon fiber hull. The agency would not have classified the sub using that material.

Brooks, a senior hardware engineer, spoke about his role analyzing data for OceanGate and the company’s lack of funds. The “company was economically stressed” and asked him to go without paychecks, he said.

Karl Stanley, the owner of a diving expedition company in Honduras and a close friend of Stockton Rush, is due to testify later today.

Stanley went on the doomed submersible with his friend in 2019 and is scheduled to speak at 1.30pm. He has previously said he believes Rush “definitely knew it would end like this.”

It’s possible Stanley could speak about his experience on the submersible during a dive and warnings he gave Rush about Titan. He said he doesn’t believe his friend did enough research into his carbon fiber design.

Amber Bay, OceanGate’s former director of administration, will begin testifying at 9am.

Bay might discuss her experiences with Rush. Prior witnesses have described Rush as someone who was difficult to deal with at times.

To qualify for classification with the American Bureau of Shipping, submersible owners must:

1. Establish and maintain recognized technical standards

2. Check that the design of the submersible is in compliance with the standards

3. Certify material and equipment that will be incorporated into the vessel complies with standards

4. Ensure vessel is in compliance with ABS standards throughout lifetime

Photos and exhibits pertaining to the investigation are available on Twitter. One set of documents shows the mapped location of the Titan’s debris on the seafloor. The other photo is of the submersible’s dome previously referenced in testimony.