Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771

Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 was a passenger flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco. On December 7, 1987, the British Aerospace 146-200A, registration N350PS, was intentionally crashed in San Luis Obispo County near Cayucos, after being hijacked by a passenger, killing all 43 passengers and crew aboard the plane. Five victims, including the two pilots, were presumably shot dead before the plane crashed. The perpetrator, David Burke, was a disgruntled former employee of USAir, the parent company of Pacific Southwest Airlines. The crash was the second-worst mass murder in Californian history, after the similar crash of Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 in 1964. It was the second fatal crash of PSA, after Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182. The motive for the hijacking and resulting mass murder-suicide was anger towards Burke's former boss, Ray Thompson, who had refused to reinstate Burke after he had been fired for theft. Thompson was on Flight 1771 and was the first victim.

Incident

USAir, which had recently purchased Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA), fired ticketing agent David A. Burke on November 19 for petty theft of $69 from in-flight cocktail receipts. Burke had also been suspected of involvement with a narcotics ring. After meeting with his manager Ray Thompson in an unsuccessful attempt at reinstatement, Burke purchased a ticket for PSA Flight 1771, a daily route from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to San Francisco International Airport (SFO). Thompson was a passenger on the flight, which he regularly took for his daily commute from his workplace at LAX to his home in the San Francisco Bay Area. Flight 1771 departed from LAX at 15:31 PST, scheduled to arrive in San Francisco at 16:43.

Using USAir employee credentials that he had not yet surrendered, Burke, armed with a Smith & Wesson Model 29.44 Magnum revolver that he had borrowed from a coworker, bypassed the passenger security checkpoint at LAX. He gained access to the plane using a locked crew door with its access code scratched above the lock. After boarding the plane, Burke wrote a message on an airsickness bag, but whether he delivered the message to Thompson before shooting him is unknown. The note read:

Hi Ray. I think it's sort of ironical that we end up like this. I asked for some leniency for my family. Remember? Well, I got none and you'll get none.

The exact sequence of events is unknown, although some details were determined based on information from the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder (CVR). Because of the poor quality of the recording, it was not possible to decipher everything spoken in the cockpit, nor was it possible to positively attribute words to specific individuals.

First, the sound of the lavatory door opening was heard. It has been speculated that this was Burke loading the gun and giving Thompson time to read the note. As the aircraft, a four-engined British Aerospace BAe 146-200, cruised at 22000 ft over the central California coast, the CVR recorded either Captain Lindamood or First Officer Nunn asking air-traffic control about reports of turbulence. During the controller's reply, the CVR picked up two "high-level gunshot-like sound[s]". Burke had likely shot Thompson at this time. One of the pilots reported twice to the center controller that there had been gunshots fired aboard the aircraft. As the controller asked the pilots whether they wished to divert to Monterey, the sound of the cockpit door opening could be heard, followed by the sound of a female voice, believed to be that of flight attendant Debbie Neil. The only word that could be discerned from this voice on the recording was the word "captain". This was followed one second later by a male voice saying something that was mostly unintelligible on the recording but ended with the word "problem." The FBI's transcript notes that this may have been Burke's voice. Although sources such as the Mayday episode about Flight 1771 have stated that the complete phrase was "I'm the problem," this does not appear in the official FBI report. Immediately following this exchange, two more gunshot sounds were heard, followed by another gunshot six seconds later.

Burke shot Neil, Lindamood and Nunn, incapacitating and possibly killing them. Fifteen seconds later, the CVR recorded the sound of the cockpit door opening or closing, as well as increasing windscreen noise as the airplane pitched down and accelerated, indicating either that Burke pushed the control column down and forced the plane into a dive or that the captain or first officer was slumped against it. Thirty-two seconds after the sounds made by the cockpit door, a sixth and final gunshot was heard. All that could be determined was that this shot occurred in the passenger cabin. Some speculation arose that Burke shot himself, though this seems unlikely because a fragment of Burke's fingertip was lodged in the trigger when the investigators found the revolver. This indicated that he was alive and was holding the gun until the moment of impact. The most probable victim was off-duty PSA pilot Douglas Arthur, who was likely trying to enter the cockpit to recover the plane from its dive. For the remainder of the recording, the sound of windscreen noise and "distant voices" could be heard.

At 4:16 p.m., the plane crashed into a hillside on the Santa Rita cattle ranch in the Santa Lucia Mountains between Paso Robles and Cayucos. The plane was estimated to have crashed at a speed slightly faster than that of sound, around 770 mph, disintegrating instantly. Based on the deformation of the titanium flight-data recorder case, the aircraft experienced a deceleration of 5000 g-force when it hit the ground. It was traveling around a 70° angle toward the south. The plane struck a rocky hillside, leaving a crater less than 2 ft deep and 4 ft across. Only 11 of the passengers were ever identified.

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) determined that Burke was responsible for the crash based on the discovery of parts of a handgun containing six spent cartridge cases and a note written by Burke on an airsickness bag. Other evidence connected Burke to the flight, such as an answering machine message that he had left for his estranged girlfriend.