That's a long damn flight in a twin otter.

Just not this time.

All the fuel in the world doesn't do much good if you can't use it.

Pretty early to say fuel starvation. Likeliest, yes, but need the investigation.

They were going NORCAL to HI but only made it 40NM out to sea??? That would be some pretty epic fuel mismanagement, if that's what it was.

And how hard is it switch tanks or whatever before ending up in the drink?

Although if a ferry tank was involved, there could have been plumbing issues.

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/articl...iles-off-half/
They turned around because they knew they had an issue. Contacted the Coast Guard when it was apparent they could not back it back to land.

How far out did they get, before they turned around? Two hours out, almost two hours back. Hmmm…

Does FlightAware have the info?

Fear not. Juan Brown will be along momentarily to save us all the trouble of an investigation. Juan has the answers. It's on youtube, after all.

My question is how did they wind up killing themselves while ditching a twin otter? Something went bad wrong on that water landing.

Waves. And no floats, if it had floats they probably removed them to get more range.

Personally, I'd vastly prefer to ditch a retract than fixed gear.