Missing Titanic submarine passengers are locked in from the outside with 'no way to escape'

The crew on board the missing Titanic submersible have no way of getting out, a former passenger has said.

Right now, a huge search and rescue mission is ongoing for OceanGate's vessel, Titan.

On board are five passengers: British billionaire Hamish Harding; French maritime expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet; Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman; and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.

Each of them paid $250,000 for their place on the expedition travelling down to view the wreck of the Titanic, which has been lying on the ocean floor for over a century.

However, during the vessel's descent on Sunday (18 June), it vanished and has not been seen since.

In an update, the US Coast Guard said that despite the enormous amount of resources that's been put into the mission, 'to date, search efforts have not yielded any results'.

Captain Jamie Frederick, of the First Coast Guard District, said it was 'complex' and 'requires multiple agencies'.

American Photo Archive/Alamy

He explained that the Titan vessel now had just 40 hours of oxygen left for the five passengers.

But this isn't the first time the submersible has got into trouble - last year, a separate crew also became lost during its expedition.

One of the passengers on board that voyage was Shrenik Baldota.

Speaking about the incident during a news report, he recalled: "We were lost. We were lost for two-and-a-half hours."

Fellow passenger, CBS reporter David Pogue, also opened up about the scary ordeal.

Taking to Twitter this week, he wrote: “You may remember that the @OceanGateExped sub to the #Titanic got lost for a few hours LAST summer, too, when I was aboard."

And when asked about the current crew's chances of survival, Pogue said it he was hopeful but it was a very worrying time.

"Communication with the sub is lost... AND they don’t know where it is," he said.

BBC

"Yes, they could still be OK. They have four days of oxygen, and seven ways to rise to the surface. The question is, why HAVEN’T they?"

However, he warned that the crew is completely locked inside and is unable to get out.

Explaining the set-up during his report back in November, Pogue said: "The crew closes the hatch, from the outside, with 17 bolts. There's no other way out.

So unless they are found and let out of the vessel manually, they will die, he said.

"There's no way to escape, even if you rise to the surface by yourself," he told the BBC. "You cannot get out of the sub without a crew on the outside letting you out.

“There’s no backup, there’s no escape pod - it’s get to the surface or die."

Company OceanGate, which operates deep sea tours, said in a statement yesterday (19 June) that it was 'mobilizing all options' to rescue the vessel and its crew after it failed to surface on Monday.