He had held Camacho and her six-year-old daughter at gunpoint on a forced six-hour auto drive the previous Friday, and he seemed particularly bitter toward the boss who fired him: Raymond Thomson, 48, the USAir customer-service manager in Los Angeles. That was how an FBI affidavit described Burke's boarding of Flight 1771 after purchasing a one-way ticket. "We've got a problem here," said a voice on the cockpit tape recorder recovered at the crash site. Pacific Southwest Airlines flight 1771 was a commercial flight that crashed near Cayucos, California, United States, on December 7, 1987, as a result of a murder–suicide by one of the passengers. All 43 people on board the aircraft died, including the man who caused the crash, a disgruntled former employee of USAir, the parent company of PSA. Coordinates: 35°30′57″N 120°51′19″W  /  35.51583°N 120.85528°W  / . A final gunshot was heard, and it is speculated that Burke shot himself. David Burke, 35, was also a USAir agent, who had been fired on Nov. 19 after he was caught stealing $69 from flight cocktail receipts by a hidden camera. It read:

On 7 December 1987, the British Aerospace 146-200A, registration N350PS, crashed in San Luis Obispo County near Cayucos, [3] [4] as a result of actions by one of the passengers. Incidents resulting in at least 50 deaths shown in This was followed by scuffling and shouts in what one investigator described as "a terrible commotion."

After meeting with his supervisor in an unsuccessful attempt to be reinstated, he purchased a ticket on PSA Flight 1771, a daily flight from Using his unsurrendered USAir credentials, Burke, armed with a loaded Several seconds later, the CVR picked up increasing windscreen noise as the airplane pitched down and accelerated. The distress call came from Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 halfway on its run from Los Angeles to San Francisco, flying at 22,000 ft. Two minutes later, the British Aerospace commuter jet shrieked toward earth in a nearly vertical dive and disintegrated as it slammed into a hill near Paso Robles in San Luis Obispo County. Finally came a high whine, presumably created by air rushing out of the pressurized cockpit through a bullet hole in a window or wall. Thomson commuted regularly by air from his Tiburon home in San Francisco Bay. A short clip from a show detailing the tragic events of Flight 1771's crash On December 7, 1987. "Hi, Ray. The grisly discoveries: one of Burke's thumbs, identified by its print, proving he had boarded the flight, and a Smith and Wesson .44 magnum revolver with six empty casings. Incident The FBI found a USAir employee who said Burke had borrowed the gun from him last month. Then came other, more ominous sounds. Born in Britain of Jamaican parents, Burke had never married but had fathered seven children by four women. ... (Western Airlines Flight … HE BYPASSED SECURITY AND CARRIED ABD A BORROWED 44 CALIBER PISTOL. "David Burke had been allowed to bypass security screening as a familiar airlines employee." Several seconds later, the CVR picked up increasing windscreen noise as the airplane pitched down and accelerated. An irate former employee named David Burke stormed the cockpit and shot the pilot and co-pilot. December 7th, 1987.

An inert body, slumped against the controls, could throw the plane into a dive. A policy was also put into place stipulating that all airline flight crew were to be subject to the same security measures as passengers.The crash also killed Stephen E. Cone, a lawyer in San Francisco with the firm Farella, Braun and Martel.We are using cookies for the best presentation of our site.