David Burke And Flight 1771

In 1987, a disgruntled former USAir employee named David Burke boarded Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 from Los Angeles to San Francisco with a stolen revolver and confronted his former supervisor, Ray Thomson, in midflight.

He shot Thomson, prompting a flight attendant to warn the cockpit that they had a problem; when the pilot asked what kind of problem, Burke shot the attendant and replied, "I’m the problem." He then forced his way into the cockpit, shot both pilots, and sent the plane into a near-vertical dive. The plane crashed near Cayucos, California, killing all 43 people on board.

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