These Red Flags Made Explorer Rethink OceanGate Titanic Trip

A former OceanGate customer who booked a Titanic wreckage tour on the company's Titan submersible says that he canceled his voyage after noticing several worrying red flags about the now-missing vessel.

Chris Brown, a self-described "modern-day explorer," said during a Wednesday interview on CNN's The Lead With Jake Tapper that he examined "the risks involved" after paying an early deposit for a seat on the Titan in 2017. Brown said that he canceled his trip after noticing that OceanGate was repeatedly missing important depth benchmarks for the submersible.

"There seemed to be a lot of risks that were outside of my control, and I didn't like the way that they were being approached by the company," said Brown. "They set some depth targets [and said they would] hit those targets on set dates. They continuously missed them."

"By the end of 2018 ... they still hadn't reached depth of 300 meters," he added. "The [Titanic] wreck is at 3,800 [meters]."

Brown went on to say that other concerning details about the submersible and OceanGate led him to conclude that the company was relying on improvised solutions and not running "a professional diving operation" by December 2018, when he canceled his trip.

"Industrial casing was being used as ballast, they've got like an Xbox controller for steering it," Brown said. "The parts seemed off the shelf. And it just seemed like, you know, if you wanted to try and figure a way of getting across a river, 'let's strap a bit on here.'"

"It didn't come across as a professional diving operation to me," he added. "So, I took the decision to withdraw my deposit and to get off the program at that stage."

Newsweek has reached out to OceanGate via email for comment.

Brown is far from the only person who expressed safety concerns about the submersible after having a close encounter with OceanGate.

One of the company's former employees sued the company over safety issues in 2018, while dozens of marine technology experts warned OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush that his refusal to independently test the vessel was risking a "catastrophic" outcome in a letter sent during the same year.

Rush reportedly rejected the concerns raised in the letter, arguing that allowing outside testing would be "stifling innovation." During a 2017 CBS interview, Rush claimed that the Titan was "pretty much invulnerable."

Explorer Josh Gates, host of Discovery's reality series Expedition Unknown, also revealed on Wednesday that he had canceled a "huge opportunity" to film the Titanic wreckage in 2021 after the Titan "did not perform well" during a test dive.

Camera operator Brian C. Weed, who works with Gates and was present during the test dive, said on Instagram that the experience left him with "a lot of misgivings" as "there were several things about the sub" that made him "feel very uneasy."