Desperate race against time: Passengers aboard 'Titan' submersible due to have run out of oxygen

By Ayse Irem Tiryaki

ANKARA (AA) - Although the oxygen is due to have run out in the Titan submersible, which set out with five people to see the 110-year-old wreckage of the Titanic before disappearing in the Atlantic Ocean, search and rescue operations are still ongoing.

US Coast Guard officials had calculated that the passengers on board the Titan were due to run out of oxygen by around 12 noon today local time (around 1400GMT), in the North Atlantic. Nevertheless, search and rescue teams from the US, UK, Canada, and France are working fiercely to find the submersible, despite the apparently narrow odds.

Passengers on the missing submersible, whose ticket price is $250,000, include English billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Davud and his son Suleyman Davud, Stockton Rush, the founder and CEO of OceanGate, the company that owns the submersible, and French submarine pilot Paul Henry Nargeolet.

The Titan, which set out with approximately 96 hours of oxygen and an estimated journey duration of two-and-a-half hours, lost communication with the surface ship Polar Prince after one hour and 45 minutes of diving.

Underwater, where GPS does not work, the submersible was guided by text messages from the surface ship.

The ship is said to use the Starlink satellite internet system owned by Elon Musk's company SpaceX.

- Narrow sub, sealing passengers inside

The submersible, about 6.4 meters (21 feet) long, has been criticized as "primitive" by experts due to its narrow space, limited food supply, and inadequate technological equipment, making it unsuitable for long periods underwater.

It was reported that the sub was operated with a video game controller, which is also used in some other marine vehicles.

Even if the submersible resurfaced on its own, the passengers reportedly could not escape until help arrived, as they were sealed in with 17 bolts from the outside.

An earlier US Coast Guard statement said a Canadian military search aircraft detected some sounds that they thought could belong to the submersible, heard at 30-minute intervals.

But it was not confirmed whether these sounds were from the submersible or not.

Former submarine captain David Marquet told CNN that the passengers are likely thirsty, hungry, and very weak, noting that the water surrounding the vehicle is at the freezing point, which would make the inside of the craft icy cold.

Earlier, David Lochridge, the former director of marine operations for OceanGate, wrote a report saying the submersible needed further testing and that passengers could be at risk when it reaches "extreme depths."

*Writing by Esra Tekin in Istanbul