Cause of Titan submersible implosion that killed five revealed in damning final report

Company failures, design flaws and inadequate regulatory oversight were to blame for the deadly 2023 Titan submersible disaster that killed all five passengers on board, according to the final report on the incident released by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.“The investigation determined that the as-built properties of the Titan’s carbon fibre cylinder were never validated to ensure they met the theoretical values used in the design process and that the construction and testing of the Titan did not follow standard engineering practices,” the agency concluded in its 136-page report.It wrote that OceanGate, the US-based company leading the doomed expedition to the Titanic wreckage, didn’t fully grasp the extent of the danger the craft posed to passengers, and was blinded by “groupthink” and “confirmation bias.”Agency inspectors examined unused pieces of the same material the Titan was made from and found fundamental structural defects that left it subject to compromised structural integrity, according to the report.Although OceanGate tested the craft at an equivalent depth to that of the Titanic wreckage — approximately 12,500 feet — the report found it failed to test the impact on the vessel after facing the punishing forces of multiple voyages.“The as-built properties of the Titan’s carbon fibre cylinder were never validated to ensure they met the theoretical values used in the design process, and the construction and testing of the Titan did not follow standard engineering practices,” TSB wrote.“As a result, OceanGate did not know for how long the Titan’s pressure hull would remain structurally intact when used repeatedly for dives to the depth of the Titanic.”TSB Canada’s findings echo a National Transportation Safety Board report on the disaster released in October, which concluded that the faulty engineering of the Titan “resulted in the construction of a carbon fiber composite pressure vessel that contained mult...