Named 10 tours for the super-rich, which ended in disaster, like with Titan

Enterprising and super-rich tourists are not so-rare victims of extreme tours. In the Western press, in the wake of interest in the recent disaster of the submersible “Titan” with billionaires on board, they counted 10 cases of tours for the super-rich, which ended in disaster.

Moreover, there are risks both in extreme routes – like Antarctica or Everest, and in much more conditionally accessible extreme tours.

1. The famous billionaire and extreme tourist, founder of Virgin Atlantic, Richard Branson, who in his life went into space, crossed the English Channel in an amphibious car, and, on the way, was named one of the passengers on the Titan, but still was not there. There was also a journey in his life – a disaster, which was an attempt to make a trip around the world in a hot air balloon in 1998. Three members of the balloon crew—also in the cockpit—Steve Fossett and Per Lindstrand were in mortal danger when the shell of their balloon, called the Global Challenger, blew apart ten miles off the coast of Hawaii. But in the end, they were saved – after which they interrupted their travels.
2. Another catastrophe without a tragic ending happened in the Arctic – so the helicopter of the British polar explorer Hannah McKind crashed on the way to the North Pole. Fortunately, all four people on board survived.
3. Another young extreme, who wanted to set a new record, was not so lucky. In 2014, 17-year-old Haris Suleman attempted to set a new record for the fastest single-engine plane trip around the world, and he was supposed to be the youngest person to do so. Alas, his plane crashed in the Pacific Ocean just a few days before the final.
4. Another irresistibly attractive point of the planet for non-poor extreme people “collects” human victims regularly – and dozens of them a year. “Why do people strive to climb Everest? Because he is, ”said the British climber George Mallory, who died during his third attempt to climb the highest mountain in the world. It is estimated that more than 6 thousand people have successfully climbed Everest in recent years, and another 300 have not survived this “extreme tour”. Moreover, the current year seems to be the deadliest – in the 2023 season, which ended in May, 17 dead climbers have already been read.
5. Another attractive point is the only uninhabited “ice mainland”, Antarctica. Where for the “super-rich” go on quite comfortable cruises. But there is one thing – even the US Coast Guard was forced to investigate tour operators providing such tours. The reason is the wave of deaths on these cruises. At least four people were reported killed, two of them in a pleasure boat that capsized.
6. A rare adventure was also sought by tourists who traveled in 2019 to New Zealand’s Fakaari volcano off the coast of the North Island. The trip to an active volcano was truly unforgettable – and for some, the last – the eruption on December 9, 2019, led to the fact that 47 people were stranded on the island in extreme conditions. The rescue operation lasted two weeks and resulted in more than a dozen dead.
7. Another popular type of extreme sport and “sport for the rich” is a round-the-world trip on yachts, especially “associated” with racing. So, in the 25 years that the Clipper Round the World yacht race is taking place, at least three yachtsmen have died – and this is only for the period from 2015 to 2017.
8. Some, however, are unlucky in quite familiar tourist places. In the state of New York in the USA, for example. There, something went wrong during an excursion to an underground cave, along the underground section of the Erie Canal. The boat with tourists capsized, and 28 passengers and one crew member fell out. As a result, 11 people needed medical care, and one person died.
9. Another emergency in the usual tourist area and the United States occurred in the Grand Canyon. In 2018, a helicopter touring the Grand Canyon crashed, killing the five British tourists on board. Years after the incident, investigators determined that “tailwinds, potential downdraughts, and turbulence” were the cause of the crash.
10. American off-road racing enthusiasts have also suffered. The jeep racing team was traveling from the Yankee Boy Basin area in southwestern Colorado as part of an organized overland expedition when their Gladiator jeep was blown off the edge. The driver and two passengers fell over 200 feet to their deaths.

Well, let’s recall, in fact, about the “Titan”. On board, the submersible was Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old billionaire, Paul-Henri Nargeole, a French diver who participated in the very first expedition to the Titanic in 1987, as well as Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleiman. Communication was lost 1 hour 45 minutes after the start of the dive. Such a submarine sinks at 30 meters per minute so that it could sink to a depth of 3150 meters. The wreckage of the bathyscaphe was raised, which caused the disaster – it turns out that the first versions can be read here.