| Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 |
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| aviation accidents and incidents in 1964 | |
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Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 was a twin-engine Pacific Air Lines 1964 near San Ramon, California . The crash was likely the first instance in the United States of an airliner's pilots being shot by a passenger as part of a mass murder/suicide; Francisco Gonzales, a passenger, shot both the pilot and co-pilot before turning the gun on himself causing the plane to crash killing all 44 aboard. Pacific Air Lines Flight 773, a Fairchild F-27A twin-engine turboprop, Federal Aviation Administration registration number N2770R, took off from Reno, Nevada at 5:54 a.m., with 33 passengers and a crew of three for San Francisco International Airport, with a scheduled stop in Stockton. The crew consisted of Captain Ernest "Ernie" A. Clark, pilot in command, First Officer Ray Andress, copilot, and Flight Attendant Margaret Schafer. After crossing the Sierra Nevadas, the plane made its scheduled stop at Stockton, where 10 passengers boarded and two passengers deplaned, bringing the plane’s total to 41 passengers. Approximately 10 minutes after the aircraft’s 6:38 a.m. departure from Stockton, en route to San Francisco, the Oakland Air Route Traffic Control Center received a garbled radio message from Flight 773 and the aircraft disappeared from the center’s Radar displays. Oakland Air Route Traffic Control attempted unsuccessfully to contact flight 773. Oakland then asked another aircraft in the immediate vicinity, United Air Lines Flight 593, if they had Flight 773 in sight. Flight 593's flight crew responded that they did not see flight 773, but within moments they reported: "There’s a black cloud of smoke coming up through the undercast at ... three-thirty, four o’clock position right now. Looks like (an) oil or gasoline fire." Oakland Air Route Traffic Control realized that the smoke spotted by United Flight 593 was likely caused by the crash of Pacific Air Lines Flight 773. Flying at its assigned altitude of 5,000 feet, Flight 773 had suddenly gone into a steep dive and crashed into a hillside, exploding, near San Ramon (37° 45'34" N 121° 52'24" W) in Contra Costa County. Flight 773's last radio message, from First Officer Andress at 6:48 a.m., was deciphered through laboratory analysis: "Skipper’s shot. We’ve been shot. (I was) tryin’ to help." A Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver was found in the wreckage; it held six spent cartridges. Both aviation and FBI investigators determined that San Francisco resident Francisco P. Gonzales, a passenger who previously had told several people he was going to kill himself, had shot both the pilot and co-pilot during the flight. A former member of the Philippine yachting team at the 1960 Olympics, Gonzales, 27, had been "disturbed and depressed" over marital and financial difficulties in the months preceding the crash. A credit check showed that Gonzales was deeply in debt and that nearly half of his income was committed to various loan payments. Gonzales had advised both relatives and friends that he "would die on either Wednesday, 6 May , or Thursday, 7 May ." EXTERNAL LINKS
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