A veteran diver has revealed he almost joined the Titanic tourist expedition that is now missing southwest of Newfoundland, Canada.
Idaho attorney David Concannon credited his lucky escape to a last-minute decision to skip the $250,000-a-ticket expedition in order to tend “to another urgent client matter,” according to a Facebook post he shared on Monday. Mr Concannon owns an expedition consulting firm and is a consultant for OceanGate Expeditions, the company that operated the submersible.
Mr Concannon who has gone on three deep-water expeditions to the RMS Titanic himself, said that he is assisting the US Coast Guard and government officials as they race against time to find the five passengers aboard the Oceangate Titanic submarine.
“As I posted last week I was supposed to be on this expedition and, indeed, on this dive, but I had to cancel to attend to another urgent client matter,” Mr Concannon wrote. “I was called and asked to provide whatever assistance I could to ensure the safe return of everyone in the sub. Of course, I immediately agreed.”
Mr Concannon pleaded with relatives of the passengers and members of the media to stop reaching out to officials during this critical time, saying those interactions could “interfere with more important communications.”
“We are working this problem HARD!!! We have solutions and we are trying extremely hard to implement them,” Mr Concannon wrote in a separate post on Monday night. “I hope to get a few hours of sleep, wake up and see very positive responses from the US Government in my Inbox.”
The veteran diver vowed to tell “the whole world the names of the people who did not do their jobs.”
Mr Concannon told NewsNation on Monday night that critical equipment that could help recover the missing Titan vessel is currently thousands of miles away in the Guernsey Channel Islands. The equipment is ready and waiting to be sent to the Atlantic Ocean to help locate the submersible, but can’t go anywhere until the US government authorises it.
“This equipment has been on the tarmac for hours. When I communicate with the US government, I get ‘out of office’ replies, not from everyone, but from key people that have a signoff on this,” he said.
“That’s unacceptable. I don’t want to discourage the government officials that are helping because they’re doing their jobs, but we need to do it quicker.”
With the clock ticking, concerns continue to grow for the British billionaire explorer, renowned French diver, Pakistani father and son, and the OceanGate CEO stuck on board the vessel at sea.
The Titan vessel left its mother ship on Sunday morning and lost contact just 1 hour and 45 minutes later. There has been no contact with the vessel since then.
