'SAFER THAN CROSSING THE STREET'

MORE QUESTIONS OVER TITANIC SUB'S DOOMED TRIP | But customers said ‘no’ to trips | Fears about the hull material | ‘Old scaffold poles for ballast’

- CHRISTOPHER BUCKTIN

A BUSINESSMAN who turned down cut-price seats on the doomed Titan submarine said the company's boss told him it was "safer than crossing the street".

Jay Bloom shared messages between himself and OceanGate chief Stockton Rush, who died with four others when the submersible imploded on a trip to the wreck of the Titanic.

He said: "I expressed safety concerns and Stockton told me, 'While there's obviously risk it's way safer than flying in a helicopter or even scuba diving.

"He was convinced it was safer than crossing the street but he was wrong."

US entrepreneur Bloom spoke out amid growing criticism of the Titan's owners as more stories emerged over safety concerns.

British-based Pakistani tycoon Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman, 19, died with Mr Rush, 61, British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, and France's Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 77.

Yesterday the Dawood family said Shahzada and Suleman - who had just finished his first year at Strathclyde University's business school in Glasgow, had "passed on to the next leg of their spiritual journey hand-in-hand, father and son".

Writing on Facebook, Mr Bloom said Mr Rush had asked in February if he wanted to see the Titanic in May but weather postponed the dive and the seats went to the Dawoods.

Adventurer Robert Mester turned down a trip in Titan after citing its "off-the-shelf" equipment.

He said: "It had a carbon-fibre hull, which is not a material successfully used at great depths." Chris Brown, 61, of Harrogate, Yorkshire, paid a deposit for a 2016 OceanGate trip but pulled out over safety fears.