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Pacific Air Lines Flight 773
Aviation accident caused by hijacking / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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]
Quick Facts Hijacking, Date ...
![]() The aircraft involved in 1962 | |
Hijacking | |
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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 |
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 |
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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.