Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 - Background

Background

USAir had recently purchased and was in the process of absorbing Pacific Southwest Airlines. Burke had been terminated by USAir for petty theft of $69 from in-flight cocktail receipts, and had also been suspected of other crimes. After meeting with Raymond F. Thomson, his supervisor, in an unsuccessful attempt to be reinstated, he purchased a ticket on PSA Flight 1771, a daily flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Burke's supervisor was a passenger on the flight, which he took regularly for his daily commute to and from work.

Using his unsurrendered USAir credentials, Burke, armed with a loaded .44 Magnum revolver that he had borrowed from a co-worker, was able to use the employee security bypass checkpoint at Los Angeles International Airport. After boarding the plane, Burke wrote a message on an airsickness bag which he probably gave to Thomson to read before shooting him:

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 ft (6,700 m) over the central California coast, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) recorded the sound of someone entering and then leaving the toilet. The captain and the co-pilot asked air traffic control about turbulence when the sound of two shots being fired in the cabin was heard on the CVR. This was when Burke must have shot Thomson to death. The co-pilot immediately reported to air traffic control that a gun had been fired on board and no further transmissions were received. The CVR recorded the cockpit door opening and a female, presumed to be a flight attendant, told the cockpit crew "We have a problem." The captain replied, "What kind of problem?" A shot was fired, presumably killing the flight attendant, and Burke announced "I'm the problem," and two more shots are heard that either incapacitated or killed the pilots. Several seconds later, the CVR picked up increasing windscreen noise as the airplane pitched down and accelerated. The flight data recorder (FDR) indicated the control column had been pushed forward by Burke, causing the aircraft to dive.

A final gunshot was heard followed not long after by a sudden silence. It is speculated that the final shot fired by Burke had killed the airline's chief pilot, who was also on board as a passenger and who may have tried to reach the cockpit to save the aircraft. According to the TV series Mayday, because a fragment of Burke's fingertip was recovered with the gun, it indicated that he was alive and holding the gun until impact. The plane crashed into the hillside of a cattle ranch at 4:16 p.m. in the Santa Lucia Mountains near Paso Robles and Cayucos. The plane was estimated to have crashed at a speed of around 770 mph (1,240 km/h), disintegrating instantly. It is estimated that the aircraft hit the ground at five thousand times the force of gravity, and was traveling at an approximately 70-degree angle toward the south. The plane struck a rocky hillside, leaving a crater less than 2 feet deep and 4 feet across, presumably where the landing gear struck the ground. The high-speed impact had compressed the soil, which almost immediately rebounded, throwing fragments and paper high into the air before the impact explosion could reach them, and thus leaving much of the surviving wreckage untouched by fire. Unburnt paper flew everywhere as small aircraft fuel fires burned on the ground, including the note by Burke. No one survived the crash. The human remains were in very small pieces, the largest of which were feet in shoes. The force of the impact caused such extensive damage that 27 of the passengers were never identified.

After the crash site was located by a CBS News helicopter piloted by Bob Tur, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) were joined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). After two days of digging through what was left of the plane, they found a handgun containing six spent cartridge cases and the note on the airsickness bag written by Burke, indicating he may have been responsible for the crash. FBI investigators were able to lift a print from a fragment of finger stuck in the pistol's trigger guard, which positively identified Burke as holding the weapon when the aircraft crashed. 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.