1987 aircraft hijacking and crash in Cayucos, California, United States
Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Los Angeles, California, to San Francisco. On December 7, 1987, the British Aerospace 146-200A, registration N350PS, crashed in San Luis Obispo County near Cayucos, 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. 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.
Aircraft and crew.
The aircraft involved was a British Aerospace 146-200A, that had first flown on November 24, 1984, and was delivered to Pacific Southwest Airlines on December 7, exactly three years before the hijacking. The aircraft was named "The Smile of Stockton" and was powered by four Lycoming ALF502R-3 turbofan engines.
The flight crew consisted of Captain Gregg Lindamood (43) and First Officer James Howard Nunn (48), who had been working for the airline since 1973 and March 1987 respectively. Captain Lindamood had 11,000 flight hours, with 1,500 of them on the BAe-146. First Officer Nunn had 12,000 flight hours, but only 300 of them were on the BAe-146. There were three flight attendants on board: Debbie Nissen Neil (37), Debra Watterson Vuylsteke (32), and Julie Gottesman (20), employed by the airline in 1970, 1977, and 1987 respectively.
Incident.
USAir, which had recently purchased Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA), terminated David A. Burke, a ticketing agent, for petty theft of $70 from in-flight cocktail receipts; he had also been suspected of involvement with a narcotics ring. After meeting with Ray Thomson, his manager, in an unsuccessful attempt to be reinstated, Burke purchased a ticket on PSA Flight 1771, a daily flight from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to San Francisco International Airport (SFO). Thomson 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 &amp; Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum revolver that he had borrowed from a coworker, was able to bypass the normal passenger security checkpoint at LAX. He gained access to the plane via the locked crew door using the access code scratched above the lock as reported by one of the lawyers representing families of two dead passengers. After boarding the plane, Burke wrote a message on an airsickness bag, but whether or not he gave the message to Thomson to read 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 remains undetermined, though some details were able to be determined based on information from the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder (CVR). Due to the poor quality of the recording, it was not possible to decipher everything spoken in the cockpit, nor was it possible to positively attribute phrases to specific individuals. First, the sound of the lavatory door opening was heard. It is speculated that this was Burke entering to load the gun and giving Thomson time to read the note. As the aircraft, a four-engined British Aerospace BAe 146-200, cruised at 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]".349 Burke had likely shot Thomson 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 Flight Attendant Neil. What was said by her could not be discerned, aside from the word "captain".349 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 it is popularly believed that the complete phrase spoken by Burke had been "I'm the problem," this does not appear in the official FBI report. Immediately following this exchange, two more gunshot sounds were registered, followed by another gunshot six seconds later.350
Burke shot Neil, Lindamood, and Nunn, incapacitating them, if not killing them. Fifteen seconds later, the CVR picked up the sound of the cockpit door either opening or closing, as well as increasing windscreen noise as the airplane pitched down and accelerated, indicating that either Burke pushed the control column down and forced the plane into a dive or the Captain or First Officer were slumped against it. Thirty-two seconds after the sounds made by the cockpit door, a sixth and final gunshot was heard.350 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 an off-duty pilot that was working for PSA, Douglas Arthur, who was likely trying to enter the cockpit in an attempt to get the plane out of the dive. For the remainder of the recording, the sound of windscreen noise and "distant voices" could be heard.350
At 4:16 pm, 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 slightly faster than the speed of sound, around , disintegrating instantly. Based on the deformation of the titanium black box data recorder case, the aircraft experienced a deceleration of 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 deep and across. Only 11 of the passengers were ever identified.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Bureau of Investigation determined that Burke was responsible for the crash, based on the discovery of parts of a handgun containing 6 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 he had left for his estranged girlfriend, and part of his body that was recovered from the crash site.
David A. Burke.
David Augustus Burke (18 May 1952 – 7 December 1987) was born in Croydon, England, to Jamaican parents. Burke later emigrated to the United States with his parents. He had previously worked for USAir in Rochester, New York, where he was a suspect in a drug-smuggling ring that was bringing cocaine from Jamaica to Rochester via the airline. Never officially charged, he reportedly relocated to Los Angeles to avoid future suspicions. Some former girlfriends, neighbors, and law enforcement officials described him as a violent man before the events of Flight 1771. He had seven children from four women, but never married.
Aftermath.
Several federal laws were passed after the crash, including a law that required "immediate seizure of all airline and airport employee credentials" after an employee's termination, resignation or retirement from an airline or airport position. A policy was also implemented stipulating that all airline flight crew and airport employees were to be subject to the same security measures as airline passengers.
The crash killed the president of Chevron USA, James Sylla, along with three of the company's public-affairs executives. Also killed were three officials of Pacific Bell, prompting many large corporations to create policies to forbid travel by multiple executives on the same flight.
In the "Garden of Hope" section of the Los Osos Valley Memorial Park, a granite and bronze marker honors the 42 victims of Flight 1771, and a number of the passengers and crew are buried in that cemetery.
Dramatization.
An episode of the Canadian documentary TV series "Mayday: Air Disasters" titled "I'm the Problem" ("Murder on Board" for UK broadcasts) on Smithsonian Channel, chronicled the events of Flight 1771 and its ensuing investigation.
The incident and aftermath were featured in episode 113 of the Rooster Teeth podcast "Black Box Down".
References.
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