Don’t know if this one is of the same design.
I’ve been on similar tourist subs in several different countries.
In their normal configuration, they are slightly buoyant. They need to use thrusters continuously to stay submerged. In the event of power failure, it automatically returns to the surface.
They also have a substantial jettisonable ballast as well in the event of flooding.
I’ve seen two articles on this accident from separate sources. Still not clear what actually happened.
Yeah, definitely unclear what actually happened, but some newer articles are claiming the pilot(s) basically submerged with the hatch still open- witness recall the boarding crew on the float it operated off screaming “wait! stop!” as it started to descend.
Looking at a bunch of photos of the thing, it has a forward and aft thruster that can gimbal for vertical thrust through grates/pass through tunnels in the hull.
Of course, if it was actively submerging with both hatches open, it seems to me there’s a good chance it filled with water so fast that its inherent reserve buoyancy would’ve been gone extremely rapidly. It might’ve gotten so heavy so fast the jettisonable ballast (if any) was a moot point too quickly to matter.
It’ll be interesting to see what the cause turns out to be, but at the moment it is seeming like the pilot(s) descended with the hatches open, based on the witness accounts starting to come out. Since the thing very likely had some reserve buoyancy as a basic safety feature, it’s kinda hard to come up with an alternative explanation beyond ‘misconfigured dive’, right?
I have absolutely no clue how such a submersible would actually be operated / what the controls look like, but I do wonder if some tourist (kid maybe?) touched/actuated something they weren’t supposed to.
Ah, interesting. Left on its own, such a sealed vessel would stay afloat on the top of the water.
Water flooded in the access ports, it said, so perhaps the submerging was prematurely activated.
As I am getting older with poor-to-non-swimming skill, I might have been among the dead.