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OceanGate’s submarine relied on an ‘idiotic’ Excel spreadsheet

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According to a former contractor for the company, OceanGate used a hand-typed Excel spreadsheet to track its ill-fated submersible Titan.

A hearing into OceanGate's Titan submarine, which imploded last year during an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic, revealed that its navigation system allegedly relied on team members manually entering coordinate data into a spreadsheet to track the ship.

The incident last July killed all five people on board, including OceanGate CEO and co-founder Stockton Rush.

“There were delays because we had to manually write down the coordinates and then type them in,” said Antonella Wilby, a former OceanGate contractor, at the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation hearing.

“We tried to do it every five minutes, but it was a lot to do.”

This undated image from OceanGate Expeditions in June 2021 shows the company's submersible Titan
This undated image from OceanGate Expeditions in June 2021 shows the company's submersible Titan (OceanGate Expeditions)

She called the system “absolutely idiotic,” adding that she had raised concerns about the method with OceanGate but was turned away because it was not “solution-oriented.”

The ultra-short baseline (USBL) acoustic tracking system used sound signals to determine the submersible's speed, depth and position. However, rather than automatically loading the coordinate data into mapping software, it was transferred to a notebook and then entered into a spreadsheet on a computer.

Other former OceanGate employees have also raised concerns about Titan's safety. Former chief technical officer Tony Nissen told the hearing last week that he refused to test dive the vehicle.

OceanGate's submersible Titan during a descent, next to images of the five people who died while on the submersible in the North Atlantic on June 18, 2023.
OceanGate's submersible Titan during a descent, next to images of the five people who died while on the submersible in the North Atlantic on June 18, 2023. (OceanGate Expeditions/AFP via Getty)

The hearing into the Titan implosion is scheduled to continue this week, with a live stream available on the U.S. Coast Guard's official YouTube channel. An animated recreation of the incident was shown at last week's hearing, showing the submersible losing communications at a depth of 11,000 feet.

The Coast Guard said in a press release ahead of the hearing that its goal was to “uncover the facts surrounding the incident and develop recommendations to prevent similar tragedies in the future.”

OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein will appear before the hearing on Monday to provide further evidence about the company's actions.

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