FlightFollowerCessna 310 Crashes After Running Both Engines Dry on Auxiliary Tanks
Accident facts and aircraft context
On 21 March 2020, a pilot flying alone in a Cessna 310, N8080M, was headed back to Zephyrhills, Florida, when the flight ended in a field near Charleston, South Carolina.
Days earlier, the pilot had flown the 310 from Zephyrhills up to South Jersey Regional Airport in Mount Holly, New Jersey.
Purpose of the flight
Cross-country personal travel in a Cessna 310.
Flight sequence and key events
Somewhere in that turnaround, the fuel picture on board became something the pilot didn't fully account for.
The Cessna 310 has a fuel system that's earned a reputation among owners and mechanics for being genuinely difficult to manage correctly.
It carries fuel across up to six separate tanks — main tanks in the wingtips, auxiliary tanks inboard, and on some models, additional locker tanks — feeding two engines that each need to draw from the right tank at the right time.
Critically, the engines return unused fuel only to the main tank on their own side, and auxiliary fuel can't be cross-fed directly between sides.
Pilots who don't track tank state carefully can end up thinking they have more usable fuel in reach than they actually do, even when the total fuel on board is genuinely sufficient for the flight.
That appears to be close to what happened here.
Onboard avionics data — recovered from the aircraft's Garmin GDU 1060 — showed the flight cruising normally around 8,000 feet, burning roughly 14 gallons an hour combined across both engines.
But instead of the main tanks draining as fuel was consumed, they were slowly increasing in quantity: unused fuel returning from the engines, with nowhere to go but back into tanks that weren't being drawn from.
Meanwhile, the auxiliary tanks — the ones actually feeding the engines — were being steadily used up, with no return flow to replenish them.
As the left auxiliary tank dropped below a gallon, the left engine's fuel flow began cutting in and out erratically.
The aircraft was already beginning its descent when the right auxiliary tank followed the same pattern, and the right engine's power went the same way.
With both engines starved almost simultaneously, there was no time to diagnose the problem, switch tanks, and restart before the aircraft was out of altitude to work with.
The pilot went down in a forced landing short of anywhere he could have safely put the aircraft; he did not survive the impact.
Everything performed exactly as it was built to.
The failure was entirely in how the fuel system had been set up and monitored before the flight ran out of the fuel it could actually reach.
It's a pattern that shows up repeatedly in Cessna 310 accident records: pilots new to the type, or flying it infrequently, underestimating how much attention the tank-selection sequence demands compared to simpler single-tank aircraft.
The Cessna 310 accident is unusually clear in the evidence: the auxiliary tanks were selected, both engines lost power after that fuel was exhausted, and no pre-impact mechanical failure was found. The fuel-selection sequence is therefore central to the final finding.
Investigation findings
Investigators found both fuel selectors positioned to draw from the auxiliary tanks.
The NTSB's investigation found nothing wrong with the aircraft itself — no defect in the tanks, the selectors, the pumps, or the engines.
NTSB records show Cessna 310I N8080M departed on 21 March 2020. About 45 minutes into the flight, fuel selection changed from the main tanks to auxiliary tanks. Both auxiliary tanks were eventually exhausted; both engines began losing power. The aircraft crashed about a quarter mile from the diversion runway. Examination found no pre-impact mechanical failure and both selectors were on the auxiliary tanks.
What the record establishes
The pilot’s failure to properly manage the airplane’s fuel supply, which resulted in both engines losing power due to fuel exhaustion.
What the evidence shows
The aircraft had fuel remaining in its auxiliary system, but that fuel was no longer reaching the engines. Once both auxiliary tanks were exhausted, both engines lost power and the aircraft could not reach the diversion airport.
- Incident date
- https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/234226 http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2020/
- Aircraft / registration
- Cessna 310 — N8080M
- Investigation status
- NTSB Final Report ERA20LA132