Page 22 - Volume 16 Number 6

one engine in crossfeed, emptying one wing tanks system with both engines until the fuel in that wing ran out and the engines quit, it’s not terribly likely.
Fuel exhaustion. Simply running out of fuel is the most likely cause of this simultaneous engine failure. But didn’t the crew have the King Air fueled before takeoff? What we know is that the crew ordered some fuel...but they did not wait to see the fuel order carried out. The NTSB preliminary report says the airplane was fueled, but it’s not known if the crew’s fuel order was actually carried out. Was the airplane truly fueled? Was something less than the fuel order amount added to the airplane’s tanks?
A key clue to the accident is that “the flight was uneventful until the pilots observed that the fuel gauges were reading lower than they anticipated.” I can tell you, if I was delivering an airplane over a long overwater distance and the fuel gauges read lower than anticipated, I’d be turning back toward the closest land. Of course, we do not yet have a level of detail about the events of this crash to try to determine an actual cause. Regardless, the crew did in fact note the fuel gauges were lower than expected. They even called a friend at an airport at destination to see if it was good enough to fly to a close-by airport.
Mitigations
Regardless of what actually caused the King Air’s engines to quit (since the plane sunk we’ll almost certainly never know for certain), here are some mitigation strategies you can employ to avoid a similar accident experience in any aircraft type:
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Check all fuel sumps for contamination before flight. Completely drain any water or other contamination. Check the color of fuel (turbine fuel is clear) and smell the fuel to check that it is the proper grade.
Confirm the proper positioning of fuel selectors after you and your
20 • TWIN & TURBINE
JUNE 2012