Pacific Air Lines Flight 773

Coordinates: 37°45'33"N 121°52'25"W


The aircraft involved in 1962

Hijacking
Date: May 7, 1964
Summary: Mass murder, murder–suicide
Site: Contra Costa County, near Danville, California, U.S.; 37°45'33"N 121°52'25"W
Aircraft
Aircraft type: Fairchild F27A Friendship
Operator: Pacific Air Lines
Registration: N2770R
Flight origin: Reno–Tahoe International Airport, Nevada
Stopover: Stockton Metropolitan Airport, Stockton, California
Destination: San Francisco International Airport, California
Occupants: 44
Passengers: 41 (including the perpetrator)
Crew: 3
Fatalities: 44
Survivors: 0

Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 was a Fairchild F27A Friendship airliner that crashed on May 7, 1964, near Danville, California, a suburb east of Oakland. The crash was most likely the first instance in the United States of an airliner's pilots being shot by a passenger as part of a murder–suicide. Francisco Paula Gonzales, 27, shot both pilots before turning the gun on himself, causing the plane to crash, killing all 44 aboard.

As of May 2021, the crash of Flight 773 remains the worst incident of mass murder in modern California history, one death more than the subsequent Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 hijacking in 1987.

Events preceding the flight

Francisco Gonzales, a warehouse worker living in San Francisco, had been "disturbed and depressed" over marital and financial difficulties in the months preceding the crash. Gonzales was deeply in debt and nearly half of his income was committed to loan repayment, and he had informed both relatives and friends that he "would die on either Wednesday, the 6th of May, or Thursday, the 7th of May". In the week preceding the crash, Gonzales referred to his impending death on a daily basis, and purchased a Smith & Wesson Model 27 .357 Magnum revolver through a friend of a friend, with serial number S201645.

The evening before the crash, before boarding a flight to Reno, Nevada, Gonzales had shown the gun to numerous friends at the airport and told one person that he intended to shoot himself. Gonzales gambled in Reno the night before the fatal flight and told a casino employee that he did not care how much he lost because "it won't make any difference after tomorrow."

Aircraft

The plane, a twin-engined turboprop Fairchild F-27, registration N2770R, was a U.S.-built version of the Fokker F-27 Friendship airliner. Manufactured five years earlier in 1959, it had accumulated about 10,250 flight hours up to its final flight, with Pacific Air Lines as the sole owner and operator.

Flight

The F-27 took off from Reno at 5:54 am PDT, with 33 passengers aboard, including Gonzales, and a crew of three, bound for San Francisco International Airport, with a scheduled stop in Stockton, California. The crew consisted of Captain Ernest Clark, 52, pilot in command, First Officer Ray Andress, 31, copilot, and flight attendant Margaret Schafer, 30.

The plane arrived at Stockton, where two passengers deplaned and ten boarded, bringing the plane's total to 41 passengers. Both deplaning passengers reported that Gonzalez was seated directly behind the cockpit. About 6:38 am, Flight 773 lifted off and headed towards San Francisco International.

Murder-suicide

At 6:48:15, with the aircraft about ten minutes out of Stockton, the Oakland Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) received a high-pitched, garbled radio message from Flight 773, and the aircraft soon disappeared from the center's radar displays.

With Flight 773 minutes from landing, Gonzales, seated directly behind the cockpit, burst into the cockpit and shot both pilots twice. Gonzales's first bullet hit a tiny section of the frame tubing from Captain Clark's seat. His second bullet killed Clark instantly. He then shot First Officer Andress, critically wounding him. Flying at its assigned altitude of 5,000 feet (1,500 m), Flight 773 went into a steep dive of 2,100 feet (640 m) per minute at an airspeed of nearly 400 mph (350 kn; 640 km/h). The wounded Andress made a last frantic transmission as he tried to pull the plane out of the dive. The flight data recorder showed a sharp climb back to 3,200 feet (980 m). Gonzales most likely shot Andress again, fatally, before shooting himself, causing the plane to go into a final dive.

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