was a commercial flight that crashed near
San Luis Obispo ,
California , on
December 7 ,
1987 . All 43 people on board the aircraft were killed, including the man who caused the crash, a disgruntled former employee of the carrier. Among the dead were James R. Sylla, President of
Chevron Corporation USA; three other Chevron executives, and Dr. Neil Webb, president of
Dominican University Of California ."Passengers had variety of reasons to be on doomed flight," ''
Seattle Times '', December 13, 1987
David Burke (
May 18 ,
1952 -
December 7 ,
1987 ) was a former employee of
USAir , the airline that had recently purchased and was in the process of absorbing Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA). Burke had been terminated by USAir for petty theft of $69 from an airline fund and, after meeting with his supervisor in an unsuccessful attempt to be reinstated, he purchased a ticket on Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771, a daily flight from
Los Angeles ,
California to
San Francisco . Burke's supervisor, Raymond F. Thomson, took the flight regularly because Thomson lived in
San Francisco but worked at
Los Angeles International Airport ."Gun-toting fired employee linked to PSA plane crash; ex-boss was also on flight," ''
Los Angeles Times '', December 8, 1987
Using his unsurrendered USAir credentials, Burke, armed with a loaded
.44 Magnum Revolver that he had borrowed from a co-worker, was able to bypass the security checkpoint at
Los Angeles International Airport . After boarding the plane, Burke wrote a message on an air-sickness bag. The note read:
Hi Ray. I think it's sort of ironical that we ended up like this. I asked for some leniency for my family. Remember? Well, I got none and you'll get none.
As the plane, a four engine
British Aerospace BAe 146-200 , cruised at 22,000 feet (6700 m) over the central California coast, Burke left his seat and headed to the lavatory, dropping the note on Thomson's lap. As he exited the lavatory a few moments later, Burke took out his handgun and fired twice at Thomson, as the cockpit voice recorder later confirmed. He then opened the cockpit door. A female, presumed to be a
Flight Attendant , told the cockpit crew that "we have a problem." The captain replied, "What kind of problem?" Burke then appeared at the cockpit door and announced "I'm the problem," simultaneously firing three more shots that probably killed the pilots.
Several seconds later, the cockpit recorder picked up increasing windscreen noise as the airplane pitched down and began to accelerate. A final gunshot was heard and it is speculated that Burke fatally shot himself. The plane then descended and crashed into the hillside of a cattle ranch at 4:16 p.m. in the
Santa Lucia Mountains near
Cayucos, California .
It was determined several days later by the
FBI (after the discovery of both the handgun containing six spent bullet casings and the note written on the air-sickness bag) that Burke was the person responsible for the crash. In addition to the evidence uncovered at the crash site, other factors surfaced: Burke's co-worker admitted to having lent him the gun, and Burke had also left a farewell message on his girlfriend's telephone answering machine.
Previously, Burke had worked for an airline 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. He was never officially charged.
Strict federal laws were passed after the crash, including a law that required "immediate seizure of all airline employee credentials" upon termination from an airline position, and another policy that was put into place where all members of any airline flight crew, including the captain, were to be subjected to the same security measures as are the passengers.
