Titan sub only reached the depth of the Titanic on 13 out of 90 dives, says the waiver OceanGate passengers had to sign

OceanGate indicated in the liability waiver how many times the submersible dived the 3,800 meters below the Atlantic where the Titanic lies.

• The Titan sub reached the Titanic wreck on 13 out of 90 dives, according to the passenger waiver.
• This meant OceanGate's success rate might have been as low as 14% on its deep-sea expeditions. 
• The Titan failed a test dive in 2021, and other trips were scrapped in the three years prior. 

OceanGate's Titan submersible only reached the depth of the Titanic wreck on 13 out of about 90 dives, according to the company's passenger waiver.

The sub successfully completed "as few as 13" dives of 3,800 meters to the depth of the Titanic, per a waiver signed by a would-be passenger that was reviewed by Insider.

It meant the company, which called the Titan "experimental" three times in the four-page liability waiver, may have only had a success rate of about 14% for its dives to Titanic depths.

OceanGate stated that it had completed more than 14 expeditions and 200 dives in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf of Mexico using two submersibles, an archive of its website says, while it had its first successful dive to the Titanic in 2021, according to Forbes. 

But since the sub's catastrophic implosion on June 18 that killed all five people on board, multiple issues with its design have been revealed.

Rob McCallum, who provided consulting services for OceanGate in 2009, had raised safety concerns with its CEO, Stockton Rush, as early as 2018.

McCallum told Insider that the company's approach to engineering was "ad hoc" and "ultimately inappropriate," but the red flags he raised with Rush in emails, seen by Insider, were dismissed. 

One of the submersible expert's biggest concerns was that the sub hadn't been certified or approved by any regulatory bodies, as the waiver disclosed.

The form also said the Titan sub was "constructed of materials that have not been widely used for manned submersibles."  

Guillermo Söhnlein, who cofounded OceanGate with Rush, told BBC News that the sub underwent a "rigorous test programme" and was developed over a 14-year period and was "very robust." 

But Brian Weed, a former passenger, told Insider the sub failed on a test-dive in 2021 because its thrusters stopped working. It was stuck underwater for more than two hours and never made deeper than 100 feet. 

Tests on the sub at the Deep Ocean Test Facility in the US also found that its carbon-fiber hull "showed signs of cyclic fatigue" at lower depths, according to Geekwire. OceanGate then had to scrap planned dives to the Titanic in 2018, 2019, and 2020, per the report.  

An OceanGate representative told Insider it was "unable to comment."