The Beach?  

Here it comes: Back in my day...

There are a couple of "beach" issues in terms of GOM flying. Most operators require that while flying offshore, their pilots must maintain enough fuel onboard to fly back to the beach (shoreline) and then continue for 30 more minutes. This is called "Beach+30." It means that if you mess up and get totally I-IMC out there (or get a transmission chip light), you can point the compass to the "N" and fly until you hit shore and then still have enough fuel to find an acceptable place to land, even if the "beach" is also fogged-in, which sometimes happens.

Obviously, carrying enough fuel to fly back to the beach and then again for 30 minutes is burdensome and can limit the payload if you're going offshore with a heavy load in a 206 (maybe not so much in a 407). If we were going way out, us old-timers sometimes had to take just enough fuel to get to the first offshore fueling platform, tank up and then hop-scotch our way out to wherever we were going, always trying to maintain "beach+30."  It was tough sometimes, balancing payload with required fuel. Must've been tough when PHI only operated Brantly B-2Bs back in the day.

The exception having to maintain "Beach+30" was if you are offshore in a "field" of numerous platforms where one of them has fuel.

The other "beach" thing is that most operators want their single-engine ships to be passing over the shoreline ("beach"), inbound to their shore-based destination 30 minutes prior to sunset.  We call this "downtime." Also, you had to be at your onshore destination no later than sunset. Helicopters that were based offshore had to be done and shut down at "downtime."

For 135 operators, these procedures are spelled-out in their respective GoMs. Part-91 operators can do what they want. A company called Taylor Energy, which owned their own 206L, used to fly offshore at night all the time. Big balls, those guys.

We don't know what WW's particular policies are regarding fuel and "downtime."  And no, we don't know what time the WW 407 crashed, only that they reported it to the Coast Guard at 1835 (and yeah, it was already pretty dark). With modern flight-following procedures and equipment, we can 'assume' that it happened pretty close to then, but who really knows.

*Oh, and just kidding about the transmission chip thing. If you get one of those, you probably want to be looking for a big platform to set down on - one with a big quarters building and hopefully a cook! And Oh#2, I don't think PHI ever operated the Brantly, but I could be wrong.