Two On Board Fatally Injured

The U.S. Coast Guard responded Wednesday to a report of a helicopter that went down in the Gulf of Mexico near an oil rig about 60 miles south of Terrebonne Bay in Louisiana. The bodies of the two people on board were located Thursday.

Watchstanders at Coast Guard Sector New Orleans received the report at 2:40 p.m. Wednesday, of a downed helicopter, Bell model 206-L4, containing two people aboard near South Timbalier Block 317. Crewmembers on the rig deployed a life raft and reported the aircraft sank below the water.

An MH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew was dispatched from Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans, an HC-144 Ocean Sentry fixed-wing aircraft crew from Coast Guard Aviation Training Center Mobile, Alabama, and diverted the Coast Guard Cutter Sturgeon, an 87-foot patrol boat homeported in Grand Isle, Louisiana, to assist in the search.
Two Good Samaritan vessels aided with the search.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that dive teams located the bodies of two people Thursday, and Westwind Helicopters of Santa Fe, TX, the owner of the aircraft, confirmed in a statement that they were the remains of the two people who had been on board when the aircraft went down in the water.

(Image from file. Not accident aircraft. Oil rig shown for illustration purposes only)

FMI: www.ntsb.gov