ECTD (erroneous cell tail drop), a buffer management optimization strategy is suggested which can improve the utilization of buffer resources in satellite ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) networks. The strategy, in which erroneous cells caused by satellite channel and the following cells that belong to the same PDU (protocol data Unit) are discarded, concerns non-real-time data services that use higher layer protocol for retransmission. Based on EPD (early packet drop) policy, mathematical models are established with and without ECTD. The numerical results show that ECTD would optimize buffer management and improve effective throughput (goodput), and the increment of goodput is relative to the CER (cell error ratio) and the PDU length. The higher their values are, the greater the increment. For example,when the average PDU length values are 30 and 90, the improvement of goodput are respectively about 4% and 10%.