[spald]

I just ran a Google on 'hijacked +commuter' and got no reference to a California hijacking. If one has happened, perhaps you could provide a link to the story/

Oddly, a casual inspection of the google output (from above) shows scads of hijacked commuter buses and commuter trains.

[MineralMan]

Go here:

http://www.geocities.com/khlim777_my/ashijack.htm

Scroll down the page for a list of airplane hijackings since 1970. There aren't many.

Incidentally, this hijacking, in 1987, was the most recent hijacking prior to the 9/11 hijacking. Hijackings are really, really rare.

[buccaneer81]

7 December 1987; Pacific Southwest Airlines BAe146-200; near San Luis Obispo, CA: A recently fired USAir employee used his invalidated credentials to board the aircraft with a pistol and apparently killed his former manager and both pilots (USAir had recently purchased PSA). All five crew members and the 37 other passengers were killed.

[buccaneer81]

PSA 1771

Dec. 7, 1987, is a black day in the annals of the U.S. airline industry and one that has had severe repercussions for airline pilots and the rest of the aviation industry. On that day, David A. Burke, a former airline customer service agent who was fired from his position the previous month for larceny, boarded PSA Flight 1771 armed with a .44-caliber revolver. The FBI has never issued a public report on its investigation into the downing of Flight 1771. However, reports at the time said that Burke boarded the flight intending to murder his former manager, who was also on the airplane. Reliable news reports and other sources said that during the flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco, Burke murdered his former employer and subsequently gained access to the flight deck and fired shots, presumably killing or severely wounding the flight crew. The aircraft, a BAe 146, crashed near San Luis Obispo, Calif., killing all 43 persons on board.

During the cleanup of the wreckage site, an identification badge belonging to Burke was found. Burke’s former employers’ representatives stated at the time that his badge had been retrieved when he was fired, but they also conceded that it was possible for an employee to have more than one badge. "I learned from reliable sources after the tragedy that Burke actually possessed several identification badges at the time that he boarded Flight 1771," notes Capt. Lloyd Anderson (Eastern, Ret.), former chairman and long-time member of ALPA’s Flight Security Committee. "Burke apparently gained access to the aircraft while armed, on the basis of an invalid ID and personal recognition by the screeners," Capt. Anderson explains.

[Chemist_Geek]

Pacific Southwest Airlines, Flight 1771

[no-s]

I remember this one. In December 1987 a Pacific Southwest Airlines employee who had just been or was about to be fired for arguing with a supervisor used his security card to bypass security and the gate, entering the aircraft from the ramp stairs. He brought a gun, and sat in a seat behind the supervisor he quarreled with. During the flight he murdered the supervisor, then went to the cockpit and murdered the flight crew, then dove the plane into the ground, killing all aboard. The forensics were established from recovered bone fragements, data recorder, notes made by the hijacker, etc.

If other passengers or flightcrew had been armed, do you think there would have been a possibility of a different outcome?