Murder in the skies: How an ex-Olympian crashed a full flight to SFO

sfgate ^ | 12/26/2025 | Katie Dowd

[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.

[ansel12]

Yep, Jump School with no previous airline flights.

A thought that didn’t occur to me until my first commercial landing which seemed a little bumpy to me and then as I looked around at the other passengers to see if they were reacting, the realization hit me that I was a landing virgin and how odd that was since I had developed a little sense of familiarity with aircraft and being in the sky, it occurred to me that landing is probably the most important event in most people’s flying.

[yldstrk]

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.
***********
But why?

[ansel12]

That ad is like the worst one I ever saw about canned salmon from the late 70s or early 80s, it was how their canned salmon didn’t contain the gross skin and bones like all the others, it turned me off to all canned salmon.

[US_MilitaryRules]

I believe that mid air was in Cerritos, Ca.

[US_MilitaryRules]

Never mind. You’re right San Diego had one also.

[Presbyterian Reporter]

“”””Sorry - the one I remember is PSA and a Cessna midair collision over San Diego - 1978 - not a shooting.””””

---

Sorry for my bad reporting re the date. I used my memory cells.

The PSA crash happened in 1987 on a flight from LA to SFO.

Here is the link-—
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1771

[Thank You Rush]

“”I believe that mid air was in Cerritos, Ca.””

There WAS one in Cerritos also - 1986. We lived in OC at the time. That was an Aeromexico flight colliding with a Piper Cherokee that left Torrance flying to L. A.

There’s another one I can’t put my finger (or mind) on right now - a former employee of a freight company went berserk on a flight?? I’ll find it...

[Thank You Rush]

That must be the one I was trying to remember with a former employee being the culprit...I thought he had worked for a freight company but it was US Air...

We were living in Southern CA at the time each of these happened..San Diego, Cerritos, San Luis Obispo...We had a flight operation at John Wayne airport at the time so all of those caught the attention of students/flight instructors and owners of flight schools.

[Thank You Rush]

Post #26 on the thread has the link/info on the one I was trying to recall...L. A. to SFO - the work was done for me - LOL.

[Robert A Cook PE]

That must be the one I was trying to remember with a former employee being the culprit...I thought he had worked for a freight company but it was US Air...

Not a passenger flight, but a UPS freight-only flight crew was attacked in the cockpit by a (disgruntled) UPS pilot seeking revenge while in mid-flight. (The attacking pilot got onboard by pretending to need a lift back to the UPS headquarters.)

[Thank You Rush]

I think we’re all confused and no wonder when there was such a mish-mash of airliner names...US Air and Pacific Southwest. I don’t think UPS was part of what we’re thinking of...the passenger (shooter) had been an employee of US Air. Glad there’s not a test on this subject but NOW we have to sort out the one that you believe happened with a UPS plane...Do you think it was also in the bay area? Strange that there were so many in the late ‘70’s and ‘80’s just in CA.....

“”Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 was a scheduled domestic 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,[2][3] after being hijacked by a passenger.

All 43 passengers and crew aboard the plane died, five of whom, 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.[4] 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.[5]