Hamish Harding Age, Death, Wife, Family, Biography & More

 

Some Lesser Known Facts About Hamish Harding

• Hamish Harding was a British businessman, pilot, explorer, adventurer, and space tourist who resided in the United Arab Emirates. He served as the chairman of the global aircraft brokerage company named ‘Action Aviation,’ located in Dubai. On 18 June 2023, he died during a catastrophic explosion of the Titan submersible in the North Atlantic Ocean. This incident occurred while he was en route to witness the remains of the Titanic wreck.

• In 1988, he started working at a multinational IT and management consultancy company, ‘Logica’ in London, United Kingdom, where he had various responsibilities in the technical and managerial departments of the firm.

• After being promoted to the position of Managing Director at Logica India in Bangalore, India in 1997, he dedicated over five years to his work before resigning from his job in 2002.

• In 2003, Harding started his own investment company called ‘Action Group.’ It is a private equity company located in Dubai and the UK. The next year, he founded an aviation brokerage company called ‘Action Aviation’ and became the chairman. This company is based in Dubai and the UK, and it has branches in the USA and India as well. ‘Action Aviation’ has also established and operated a national helicopter air ambulance service called ‘Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS)’ in Qatar.

• Harding, along with the well-known astronaut Buzz Aldrin, visited the South Pole in 2016. After this expedition, Buzz Aldrin became the oldest individual to ever reach the South Pole at the age of 86.
  

  Hamish Harding with Buzz Aldrin

• In 2017, he introduced the first regular business jet service to the Antarctic using a business jet aircraft named Gulfstream G550 and successfully landed on the Wolfs Fang Runway. It was a collaborative project with an Antarctic VIP tourism company named ‘White Desert.’

• On 9 July – 11 July 2019, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, Harding led a team of pilots on the ‘One More Orbit Mission’ for the circumnavigation of the Earth via North and South Poles in a Gulfstream G650ER aircraft. The mission began and ended at the Shuttle Landing Facility (Space Florida) located at NASA Kennedy Space Center in the United States. They set a Guinness World Record by completing the journey in 46 hours and 40 minutes.

• In 2020, he accompanied his son Giles to the South Pole, making Giles the youngest individual, at the age of 12, to ever reach the South Pole.

• On March 5, 2021, Harding and Victor Vescovo embarked on an exploratory deep-sea dive in the Challenger Deep, the deepest section of the Mariana Trench. Their dive resulted in the achievement of two Guinness World records for reaching an astounding depth of approximately 36,000 feet and spending the longest duration of 4 hours and 15 minutes at full ocean depth. While talking about it in an interview, he said,
  

  I have always been inspired by the spirit of adventure and exploration in the Emirates, as this country gives you a feeling that anything is possible, and I am proud to represent the country as the first person from the Middle East, to sink to the lowest point on Earth.”

  

  Hamish Harding with Victor Vescovo

• On 4 June 2022, he participated in the Blue Origin NS-21 mission and ventured into space, marking the fifth manned spaceflight of the New Shepard rocket.
  

  Hamish Harding before going to the Blue Origin NS-21 mission

• In September 2022, Harding’s aviation company ‘Action Aviation’ played a crucial role in transporting eight cheetahs from Namibia to India. To support the collaborative project between the Indian Government and the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) in Namibia, ‘Action Aviation’ provided a specially modified Boeing 747-400 aircraft for this purpose. The aim of the project was to reintroduce cheetahs to India, where they have been extinct since 1947. The project received recognition from the Explorers Club as an extraordinary expedition, and Harding, accompanied by Laurie Marker, the CCF founder, proudly carried the club’s flag on the flight to India.

• Harding was featured in ‘WKND,’ the weekly magazine of the Khaleej Times newspaper in 2022.
  

  Hamish Harding and his son Giles featured in the ‘WKND’ magazine

• Harding has actively contributed to the Explorers Club, serving as a valuable member of its board of trustees and holding the position of chairman for its Middle East chapter.

• On 18 June 2023, Hamish Harding went missing in the 2023 Titan submersible incident along with Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and Stockton Rush. The submersible, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, was on a tourist expedition to view the wreck of the Titanic, the popular British passenger liner which sank in the North Atlantic on 15 April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg. Reportedly, passengers had paid $250,000 for the trip. Communication was lost with Titan one hour and 45 minutes after its dive, and the authorities were notified when it did not resurface at its scheduled time later that day. Thereafter, a rescue operation was launched to retrieve the five passengers of the submersible. It was anticipated that the craft will run out of its four-day supply of breathable air on 22 June 2023. ^[3]The Guardian The passengers’ demise was confirmed on 22 June 2023 when a debris field, located a few hundred meters away from the Titanic wreckage on the Atlantic Ocean floor, was discovered. OceanGate said that the passengers died in a “catastrophic implosion” and released a statement, which read,
  

  We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost. These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans. Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and the joy they brought to everyone they knew.”

  

  An image of OceanGate’s Titan submersible under water