Pacific Air Lines Flight 773
The aircraft involved in 1962 | |
| Hijacking | |
|---|---|
| Date | May 7, 1964 |
| Summary | Mass murder, murder–suicide |
| Site | Contra Costa County, near San Ramon, California, U.S. 37°45′33″N 121°52′25″W / 37.75919°N 121.87364°W |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Fairchild F27A Friendship |
| Operator | Pacific Air Lines |
| IATA flight No. | PC773 |
| ICAO flight No. | PCA773 |
| Call sign | PACIFIC 773 |
| 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 |
Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 was a Fairchild F27A Friendship airliner that crashed on May 7, 1964, near San Ramon, California, a suburb in the East Bay, east of Oakland. 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.
As of May 2021, 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.