Originally Posted by
27/09
The way I was taught to fly a light twin the procedure for any engine failure below blue line was to close both throttles and land ahead. This was due to the fact that at blue line, performance was marginal and worse than marginal below blue line, and speed was likely to decrease further before you got things sorted and attempted to accelerate to blue line ,plus you would be losing height. In the intervening time you were most likely to have contacted the ground or lost control at Vmca.
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Excellent advice from 27/09.
This is exactly what I also teach. 2 other points
1) My end of flight checklist for a 310 (and similar complex pistons) i sdevided into 3 short set of checks. It goes descent/approach. prelanding and final.
The first item on the descent check is "fuel selectors & quantity". It is designed to prevent exactly this kind of accident.
2) System knowledge is important. The C 310 POH specifies that the aux tanks be used in level flight because they have no slosh box or other anti unporting features. However this does not mean that the engines will stop if they are used in other than straight and level flight. In a case like this accident where for what ever reason, main tank fuel is critically low, aux fuel can be safely used as long as pitch and bank angles are kept low.