Pacific Air Lines Flight 773
Fairchild F-27 · Mass murder, murder–suicide
From Reno Tahoe International Airport (RNO) to San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Unknown
- Event fatalities
- 44 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 44
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Fairchild F-27
- Flight
- PC773
- Aircraft type
- Fairchild F-27
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N2770R
- Operator
- Pacific Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reno Tahoe International Airport (RNO)To San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic passenger service)
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Miscellaneous
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Miscellaneous › Suicide
- Personnel › Passenger
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 was a Fairchild F27A Friendship airliner that crashed on May 7, 1964, near San Ramon, California, a suburb in the East Bay, east of Oakland. The crash was most likely the first instance in the United States of an airliner's pilots being shot by a passenger as part of a murder–suicide. Francisco Paula Gonzales, 27, shot both pilots before turning the gun on himself, causing the plane to crash, killing all 44 aboard.
The crash of Flight 773 remains the deadliest act of mass murder in California history, one death more than the subsequent Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 hijacking in 1987.
Events preceding the flight
Francisco Gonzales, a warehouse worker living in San Francisco, had been "disturbed and depressed" over marital and financial difficulties in the months preceding the crash. Gonzales had competed in the 1960 Summer Olympics for the Philippines as a sailor, and had then emigrated to the United States. Gonzales was deeply in debt and nearly half of his income was committed to loan repayment, and he had informed both relatives and friends that he "would die on either Wednesday, the 6th of May, or Thursday, the 7th of May". In the week preceding the crash, Gonzales referred to his impending death on a daily basis, and purchased a Smith & Wesson Model 27.357 Magnum revolver through a friend of a friend.
The evening before the crash, before boarding a flight to Reno, Nevada, Gonzales had shown the gun to numerous friends at the airport and told one person that he intended to shoot himself. Gonzales gambled in Reno the night before the fatal flight and told a casino employee that he did not care how much he lost because "it won't make any difference after tomorrow."
Flight
The F-27 took off from Reno at 5:54 am PDT, with 33 passengers aboard, including Gonzales, and a crew of three, bound for San Francisco International Airport, with a scheduled stop in Stockton, California. The crew consisted of Captain Ernest A. Clark, 52, pilot in command, First Officer Ray E. Andress, 31, copilot, and flight attendant Margaret E. Schafer, 30. Captain Clark had a total of 20,434 hours of flying experience (including 2,793 hours on the F-27), and First Officer Andress had a total of 6,640 hours, with 988 of them on the F-27.
The plane arrived at Stockton, where two passengers disembarked and ten boarded, bringing the plane's total to 41 passengers. Both disembarking passengers reported that Gonzalez was seated directly behind the cockpit. About 6:38 am, Flight 773 lifted off and headed towards San Francisco International.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
Investigators from the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB, a forerunner organization to today's National Transportation Safety Board [NTSB]) found in the mangled wreckage a damaged Smith & Wesson Model 27.357 Magnum revolver, holding six spent cartridges. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) soon joined the CAB in a search for evidence so that the apparent criminal aspects of the case could be pursued. Investigators found that when Gonzales left San Francisco for Reno the day before the fatal flight, he was carrying the.357, and that he had purchased $105,000 worth of life insurance at the San Francisco airport, payable to his wife. The probable cause stated in the CAB accident report was "the shooting of the captain and first officer by a passenger during flight", and the FBI determined that the suicidal Gonzales was the shooter.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Pacific Air Lines Flight 773” (revision 1372143057, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB remarks
PASSENGER SHOT PILOT AND COPILOT IN ACT OF SELF DESTRUCTION
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
Wikipedia article: Pacific Air Lines Flight 773
- Article
- Pacific Air Lines Flight 773
- Revision
- 1372143057 · 2026-08-30 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q1414752
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record
- Event ID
- 19640507P000175
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Pacific Air Lines Flight 773" (page 2132151, revision 1372143057); merged with NTSB case NTSB19640507P000175 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19640507P000175: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19640507P000175
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19640507P000175: PRE1982 REGIST_NO, ACFT_MAKE, ACFT_MODEL; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record NTSB19640507P000175: operated under Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic passg.svc)
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19640507P000175: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19640507P000175: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Pacific Air Lines Flight 773" and NTSB case NTSB19640507P000175, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- From NTSB's 1962-1981 archive (PRE1982), which holds at most a short remark (98 characters, abbreviated) instead of a narrative; the accident type, phase of flight, causes and conditions are NTSB's codes, decoded as the archive defines them.
- Reviewed means this record passed the site's consistency check, not that it was checked against a narrative or report - there is none to check against.
- The operation category is mapped from the archive's operator and operation codes and has not been reviewed.