The OceanGate CEO who was killed when the vessel went missing last month, dismissed concerns over a "really loud bang" during a previous mission.
Stockton Rush, the owner of the ill-fated Titan submersible that vanished about 435 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada, warned his team about an unnerving sound during an episode of the BBC's The Travel Show last year.
"On mission four, when we got to the surface, Scott was piloting here and [we heard a] really loud bang," he said.
READ MORE: Chilling last pic of Titanic sub victims moments before father and son descended
But he added that while it was "not a soothing sound", "almost every deep-sea sub makes a noise at some point".
It is unclear what made the noise, but former OceanGate employees and other critics – including Titanic director James Cameron, who has visited the legendary shipwreck himself – have expressed the concerns they had before the vessel imploded.
Of the sub's carbon fibre hull, Cameron said: "People in the deep sea submergence engineering community warned the company that this could lead to catastrophic failure."
Doomed Titanic submarine boss flew to London to reassure Brit billionaire that trip was safe
Earlier in the programme, another "mission specialist" – the term used to refer to paying customers on the sub – said the doomed underwater vehicle "looks like it was put together with a piece of string".
Rush was one of five people on board Titan when disappeared under the ocean's surface, along with British explorer Hamish Harding, father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, and French national Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
The United States Coast Guard (USCG) confirmed during a press release that the submarine called had suffered a "catastrophic explosion" after getting lost in the Atlantic.
Prior to the announcement, half-hourly bangs had been detected with coast guards believing they may have been coming from the ill-fated sub.
In another harrowing moment during the programme, a previous passenger on a dive in 2021 said his group was forced to resurface after getting "within two football fields" of the Titanic after the battery went "kaputt".
Videographer Jaden Pan recalled there were issues "using the drops for the weights" in order to get back to the surface and said Rush recommended going to sleep during the 24 hours it would take for the weights to dissolve.
In the end, the late CEO reportedly managed to use hydraulics to drop the weights.
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