Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771
aviation accident caused by hijacking
Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 was a scheduled passenger flight from Los Angeles International Airport to San Francisco International Airport that crashed in San Luis Obispo County, California, on December 7, 1987, following an armed attack aboard the aircraft. All 43 people aboard the British Aerospace 146-200, registered N350PS, were killed.
The attacker, David Burke, was a recently dismissed USAir employee whose former supervisor was a passenger. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) attributed the crash to intentional interference and sabotage by Burke and identified deficiencies in airline security as contributing factors. The crash prompted the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to restrict exemptions from security screening for airline and airport employees.
Aircraft and occupants
The aircraft was a four-engine British Aerospace 146-200, serial number E2027, operated by Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA). It had accumulated 8,571 flight hours and was powered by Lycoming ALF 502-R3 turbofan engines. There were 38 passengers and five crew members aboard.
The pilots were Gregg Lindamood and James Nunn; flight attendants were Debbie Neil, Debra Vuylsteke, and Julie Gottesman.
Other airline employees aboard included Captain Douglas Arthur and John Conte.
The public source identifies “Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771” as aviation accident caused by hijacking. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Pacific, Southwest and Airlines.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1583411. Authority coordinates are 35.522, -120.857. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1771 and 1987.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.