 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 / 37.75919°N 121.87364°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.[1][2] 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.[3][4][5]
As of May 2021[update], 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.
- ^ "44 killed in air crash east of San Francisco". Eugene Register-Guard. (Oregon). Associated Press. May 7, 1964. p. 1A.
- ^ "Airliner crashes, burns in California, 44 dead". The Bulletin. (Bend, Oregon). UPI. May 7, 1964. p. 1.
- ^ "Accident Report, Pacific Air Lines incident of May 7, 1964, File No: 1-0017". Civil Aeronautics Board. October 28, 1964. Retrieved October 8, 2023.
- ^ "Shooting of pilots blamed for crash". Eugene Register-Guard. (Oregon). Associated Press. November 2, 1964. p. 5A.
- ^ "Investigations: Death Wish". Time. November 6, 1964. Archived from the original on January 27, 2010. Retrieved March 20, 2012.