Posted on 12/27/2025 3:19:58 AM PST by DFG
As Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 made its final approach to SFO, all seemed well. May 7, 1964, had dawned cloudy, but as the two pilots navigated the short flight from Stockton, they’d had no trouble. Behind them, 41 passengers and a flight attendant prepared for landing.
At 6:47 a.m., as the plane glided toward San Ramon, an air traffic controller made contact to let them know their transmission wasn’t coming through clearly. A moment later, what sounded like a scream ripped through the airwaves.
“Skipper’s shot,” someone was shouting. “We’ve been shot.”
The air traffic controller asked the pilot to repeat the message, but no answer ever came. A seismograph at a nearby military base spiked, and a United flight in the area radioed in to say they’d spotted a plume of black smoke coming from the hills south of Danville.
For the first time in American history, airline passengers had something new to fear: murder in the skies.
Although largely forgotten today, the downing of Flight 773 is the deadliest single act of mass murder in California history. Its reverberations were felt throughout the world, leading to a change in airplane safety that has been ubiquitous now for six decades.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
“By the time Julie Clark was working as a pilot, an important change had come to America’s skies: It was required that the door to the cockpit was locked on all flights. The law was named the Clark Act, after her father.”
And now you know the rest of the story. Thanks for the post.
That’s not a picture of a jetliner.
Gosh - you’re right: it’s a twin turboprop! The jet engines turn propellers...
The plane was a Fairchild F27A Friendship twin-engine turboprop. A Turboprop engine is also called a Jetprop because it uses a jet engine to power a propeller.
“...Despite facing sexism at every turn, [the murdered pilot’s daughter] became one of the first female commercial airline pilots in the nation...”
SFGate just... can’t... help... themselves. Wokies gotta woke!
Nevertheless, an interesting article about an event that I was born too late to remember at the time. Thanks for posting it!
“”””””While there, he bought two life insurance policies totaling $105,000; remarkably, life insurance could be bought from vending machines at the airport throughout the 1950s and 1960s.””””””
As one of the guests on the Carson show described, in those days he used to like to dress as a pilot and pretend to be wobbly, wasted drunk while buying life insurance from the loading entrance machines.
Yes, thanks for posting this.
I was an aviation cadet in 1964. I read the newspaper every day, but this is the first I’ve heard of this.
One of the biggest mistakes our government has made was creating the TSA. ‘Nuff said.
I did not know about this crash, but it reminded me of a similar crash in the late 1970’s when a good friend was killed on a PSA plane.
Similar circumstances, the shooter killed the pilot and all aboard were killed in the crash.
You can still by life insurance at some airports.
My personal airplane story is that it wasn’t until my 6th flight that I experienced a landing.
There was no black box, so we’ll never know exactly what happened in the final moments of Flight 773. But the preponderance of evidence indicates that Gonzales got up from his seat, walked into the cockpit and shot the captain, then the first officer.
“”I read the newspaper every day, but this is the first I’ve heard of this.””
We lived in Sacramento at that time and I don’t recall this news either. I guess it just shows that we weren’t all tethered to our TV during the ‘60’s....It was, get home from work, fix dinner, 6 pm local news, and then 7 pm Cronkite - kitchen cleaned up. I think the TV was turned off after that - LOL
“”As one of the guests on the Carson show described, in those days he used to like to dress as a pilot and pretend to be wobbly, wasted drunk””
Foster Brooks, I believe - great skit!
“”late 1970’s when a good friend was killed on a PSA plane.””
San Diego, right?
Sorry - the one I remember is PSA and a Cessna midair collision over San Diego - 1978 - not a shooting.
For the first time in American history, airline passengers had something new to fear: murder in the skies.
United Airlines Flight 23, October 10, 1933. Seven murdered on a Boeing 247.
United Airlines flight 629. November 1, 1955. 44 murdered on the DC-6
Paratrooper??
The copy from another ad said:
To complement the ad campaign, flight attendants handed out "survival kits" featuring hot-pink lunch pails containing a small security blanket,[32] a "lucky" rabbit's foot, the best-selling book The Power of Positive Thinking, and a fortune cookie containing the slogan "It could be worse. The pilot could be whistling 'The High and the Mighty'."[37] The attendants were also encouraged to exclaim "We made it! How about that!" upon landing.[35] Freberg had unfulfilled plans to paint a Pacific Boeing 727 to resemble a locomotive, with wheels on the fuselage and a cowcatcher on the nose.[32] Inside the cabin, passengers would have heard a recording of a steam locomotive over the loudspeakers.[32]
Matthew E. McCarthy, Pacific's chief executive and biggest shareholder, explained the campaign: "It's basically honest. We spoof the passengers' concern, but at least we admit they have it."[32] Philip H. Dougherty, writing in the Business and Finance section of the May 1 edition of The New York Times, described the advertisements as "rather shocking".[38] Objections to the unorthodox campaign were raised at a May 1967 stockholders meeting, and two Pacific Air Lines executives resigned in the wake of the controversy.[39]
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