US and Canadian aircraft and vessels were racing on Tuesday to locate a submersible missing on a commercial dive to the site of the Titanic, as fears grow for five people aboard with a limited oxygen supply.
The US Coast Guard’s Boston-based North East service said on Monday evening that a Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft able to detect underwater objects, a CP-140 Aurora, would join the search on Tuesday morning. That was to follow surface searches of the sea carried out by C-130 Hercules aircraft overnight.
Those inside the Titan submersible, which operates tourist trips to the Titanic wreck costing $250,000 a person, include Hamish Harding, a British entrepreneur, along with Shahzada Dawood, a Pakistani businessman, and his son Suleman.
There has been no official confirmation of the names of all five people missing, but multiple reports said Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a French explorer, was on board along with Stockton Rush, the founder of OceanGate, the company that built the Titan and organised the trip.
Harding is chair of Action Aviation, a Dubai-based business aircraft broker.
The Canadian Aurora aircraft is intended for anti-submarine warfare, meaning it can detect underwater objects from the air.
Most of the aircraft and vessels initially deployed in the search are limited to conducting searches of the surface, in case the submersible has returned to the surface away from the vessel that launched it. They are also equipped with sonar equipment to listen for any sounds produced.
The Titan launched on Sunday morning from the Polar Prince, a vessel that had carried it out to the dive site 900 nautical miles east of Cape Cod on the US coast.
The Polar Prince reported having lost contact with the Titan an hour and 45 minutes into the trip. The Titan had planned to travel down to the wreckage of the Titanic, which sank in April 1912 with the loss of about 1,500 lives.
John Mauger, commander of the US’s First Coast Guard District, based in Boston, told reporters at a briefing on Monday evening that the Titan had a “sustainment” capability intended to provide oxygen for those on board for up to 96 hours. That would give the search a possibility of success until about Thursday morning local time.
“We’re making the best use of every moment of that time to locate the vessel,” Mauger said.
The commander said the search was complicated by the need to search both on the surface, in case the vessel had managed to surface but was not communicating, and in “the water column”.
The wreck of the Titanic lies at a depth of 3,800 metres, where water pressure is about 380 times that of the atmosphere at sea level.
“It is a remote area and it is a challenge to conduct a search in that remote area but we are deploying all available assets to ensure we can locate the vessel and rescue the people on board,” the commander said.
According to OceanGate’s website, the submersible weighs 10.4 tonnes and is made of carbon fibre and titanium. It claims the vessel is equipped with a real-time health monitoring system to monitor the effect of pressure on the hull, giving the crew enough time to return to the surface in the event of any problems.
