News report this morning on TV said he had fuel in the tank but it was not getting to the engine.
Oh, OK.
For a flight like this, the plane would be equipped with ferry tanks inside the cabin, that pump to the main fuel tanks as needed. Lots of things to go wrong with a temporary system like that. Every component is mission critical.
Given that the internal fuel of the Cirrus 22 is less than half of what is needed for the flight, it would have been impossible to transfer all of the fuel completely out of the ferry tanks before hitting the halfway mark. That could leave you, at some point, without enough fuel to reach land and no way to get the rest of the fuel out of the temporary bladders.
Bummer...