A Petroleum Helicopters Bell 407 ditched into the Gulf of Mexico on August 16 after an apparent catastrophic engine failure. The pilot and a sole passenger escaped without injury after autorotating and deploying pop-out floats. The wreckage was recovered and a subsequent NTSB examination revealed “an uncontained engine failure near the third-stage turbine wheel” followed by the failure of the first-stage turbine wheel. The Rolls-Royce 250-C47B turboshaft had been overhauled 283 hours before the failure.