SASLess, it just might have, as they do, been away on the ground for a wee while in between jobs. So, your question of how long it had been in flight is relevant. The AAIB have given a departure time from base but, as yet, no details of where they went or what they did for two hours.
Exceeding two hours in the air is not uncommon, so I think it is unfair to suggest that they ran out of fuel based simply on the duration of the trip.
An earlier post referred to the DP Augusta 109 Power which ran out of useable fuel. That was very unfortunate and the manual was changed afterwards to clarify the ambiguity which led to the flameout. The subsequent forced landing was, IIRC, into a snow covered surface and an unseen dyke broke the aircraft's back. Hardly the Pilot's fault. He had operated in good faith and his planning was, in consideration of what he had been led to believe about fuel levels, appropriate.
I suppose that all this speculation at least keeps some people, well perhaps "amused" is not the best word, but you know what I mean, I'm sure.
Even if it serves no purpose in terms of finding what happened, the internet, and pprune, is primarily for "entertainment" of its users.
What I find distressing is how easily some posters can leap on mistakes made by other posters and then convert that mistake into the basis of an opinion.
The AAIB said:
David Miller, the AAIB’s deputy chief inspector, said: “The helicopter does not have a flight data recorder, however, it does have a significant number of modern electronic systems on board and it may be possible to recover recorded data from those systems. There were no emergency transmissions from the pilot before this accident.”
Not that there was no distress message from the aircraft.