Oceangate’s finance director quit when asked to be pilot sub

A former finance director for OceanGate said CEO Stockton Rush told her she should take on the role of the ill-fated Titan’s chief submersible pilot — a job offer that led to her quitting, since her “background is in accounting.”

After firing the submersible’s head pilot, David Lochridge, Rush asked the company’s director of finance and administration to take on the role, the ex-staffer said in an interview with the New Yorker’s Ben Taub.

Lochridge warned others at the company about “quality control and safety” problems as far back as 2018, but when he raised the issues with Rush, he was wrongfully terminated, according to a lawsuit.

“OceanGate gave Lochridge approximately 10 minutes to immediately clear out his desk and exit the premises,” his attorneys said in the filing.

“The paying passengers would not be aware, and would not be informed, of this experimental design, the lack of non-destructive testing of the hull, or that hazardous flammable materials were being used within the submersible.”

Soon after Lochridge’s firing, Rush asked the company’s finance director if she would like to take on the role.

“It freaked me out that he would want me to be head pilot, since my background is in accounting,” the unnamed former director told the New Yorker, adding that without Lochridge there, she felt she had to quit.

“I could not work for Stockton,” she said. “I did not trust him.”

She quit once she had a new job lined up, she told Taub.

The former director also said some of OceanGate’s engineers were in their late teens and early 20s, and at one point were only paid $15 an hour.

Rush, who allegedly ignored safety warnings while charging wealthy tourists $250,000 each for dives to the Titanic shipwreck, hired college interns from Washington State University to design the electrical systems for the ill-fated submersible.

Rush, 61, British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, famed Titanic explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son, Sulaiman Dawood, all died on June 18 when the submersible imploded.

Rush faced intense criticism after the disaster for seemingly ignoring major safety concerns, as he had been cautioned by various submersible experts long before the sub’s final dive.