Francisco Gonzales (1937–1964): 1960 Olympian who caused fatal plane crash killing 44 people

Born in Manila in 1937, Francisco Paula Gonzales once carried the promise of an accomplished seaman and even Olympian: he represented the Philippines in the 1960 Summer Olympics’ Dragon sailing event. But by 1964, he had morphed into the perpetrator of one of the most grim chapters in American aviation history.

On May 7, 1964, Gonzales boarded Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 en route from Reno to San Francisco, seated just behind the cockpit. During the flight, he drew a .357 Magnum revolver and shot both the captain and first officer, leaving the aircraft uncontrollable. He then turned the weapon on himself, ending his life midair. On a final cockpit recording, pilot Ernest Clark can be heard saying, "I've been shot! Oh my God, help."

Flight 773 crashed into a rural hillside in southern Contra Costa County, roughly five miles east of what is now the city of San Ramon. 

Headline from the Billings Gazette

The resulting crash claimed the lives of all 44 aboard—passengers and crew alike—making it one of the deadliest acts of mass murder on California soil, and one of the earliest known cases of a passenger executing a cockpit attack in U.S. commercial aviation. 

In the years since, the incident has been held up as a chilling early warning that passenger violence could bring down an airliner, spurring subsequent changes to cockpit security procedures. Civil air regulation amendments became effective on August 6, 1964, that required that doors separating the passenger cabin from the crew compartment on all scheduled air carrier and commercial aircraft must be kept locked in flight. 

Gonzales’s trajectory—from Olympic sailor to mass murderer—is a stark reminder that behind public achievements can lie hidden turmoil: he had reportedly been under severe financial strain, faced marital dissolution, and had in prior days brandished his weapon to acquaintances while intimating an intention to die. His family said that he has making frequent trip to Reno where he had accrued large gambling debts. 

Gonzalez was living in San Francisco and working at a department store warehouse at the time of the incident. 

Sources: Phoenix Daily Gazette, Find a Grave, Wikipedia, Billings Gazette, Civil Aeronautics Board accident report on Pacific Air Lines Flight 773, Humboldt Times, Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives