All language subtitles for M.2003-S11E10-Im.The.Problem.Pacific.Southwest.Airlines.Flight.1771.WEBDL-1080pEAC3.5.1h264-PiTBULL_track4_[eng]

NARRATOR: A passenger
plane is obliterated

in the California hills.

STEVE: There were no
wings, no fuselage.

There was no tail section.
There were no aircraft seats.

NARRATOR: Hardened steel
is ripped to pieces.

DENNIS: This was the worst
damage I've ever seen.

NARRATOR: The wreckage
paints a grim picture

of the final moments of

Pacific Southwest Airlines flight 1771.

The plane reached impossibly high speeds.

RICHARD:
They told us that it

actually broke the sound barrier.

NARRATOR: Passengers
experienced crippling G-forces.

DENNIS: We assessed the
impact forces around 5,000 Gs.

RICHARD: It would have been
a horrifying experience,

the final few seconds of their lives.

NARRATOR: Whatever brought
down flight 1771,

investigators are certain of one thing,

it was not an accident.

MAN (over radio):
Mayday, mayday.

(theme music plays)

Los Angeles International Airport,

one of the busiest in the world.

Every year, 40 million passengers arrive

and depart through LAX.

At Terminal One, a group of
passengers and crew bound for

San Francisco are making
their way through security.

A short while later, they board

Pacific Southwest Airlines flight 1771.

ROBERT: Pacific Southwest really
was a, what we'd call a large

regional airline at the time.

RAY: Set me up with a
scotch on your way back?

ROBERT: They had service in
about 30 cities all over mostly

the western part of the United States.

NARRATOR: The flight from
Los Angeles to San Francisco

is one of the most popular routes

at Pacific Southwest, also known as PSA.

Among the 38 passengers are
several PSA employees,

including the airline's chief pilot.

ROBERT: It's very common for
airline employees to commute

between cities for work
and so as people would

take a bus to work,

many airline employees
take a plane to work.

NARRATOR: Captain Gregg
Lindamood has been flying

with PSA for 14 years.

The father of three is also
a decorated combat veteran.

JAMES: Brakes.

GREGG: Brakes set.

JAMES: Flaps up.
Spoilers retracted.

NARRATOR: First officer James Nunn

only joined the
airline the previous spring.

He's also logged thousands
of hours in the cockpit.

JAMES: Thrust levers.

NARRATOR: Today, they're
piloting a British built

BAE-146 commuter jet.

With quiet turbo fan engines,
it's designed for short haul

flights over densely populated areas.

(airplane noise)

(airplane noise)

The flight to San Francisco
will take just over an hour.

JAMES: So do you know
what you're getting

the boys for Christmas?

GREGG: Well it's gonna be
Nintendo and with what it costs,

I think they can both share it.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT (off-screen):
Anything to drink guys?

JAMES: Nah. I'm fine, thanks.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Okay just
holler if you change your mind.

NARRATOR: Flight 1771 is
cruising at 22,000 feet,

above the California countryside.

♪ ♪

GREGG: Can you ask
them how it's been?

NARRATOR: Just over
halfway through the flight,

Captain Lindamood worries
about the mild turbulence.

JAMES: Center, PSA 1771.
Any reports on the ride ahead?

We've had a little continuous light chop.

MAN (over radio): PSA, this
is Rocky Mountain Center.

It's not too bad.

(gunshot).

GREGG: Oh my god,
that was a gun.

NARRATOR: The crew now has

a much bigger problem on its hands.

JAMES: Squawk 77, squawk 77.

We've had a gun fired
onboard the aircraft.

CONTROLLER (over radio): Do
you want to go to Monterey?

Could you make it, Sir?

NARRATOR: Moments later, flight
1771 falls into a steep dive.

STEVE: Witnesses caught a
brief glimpse of the aircraft

as it was plummeting down from the sky.

WITNESS: It was going
at a high rate of speed.

Looked like a dart just
diving to the ground.

(explosion)

NARRATOR: Flight 1771
crashes into an isolated hill

280 kilometers northwest of Los Angeles.

Police get to the crash site,

and find a 30 ton airliner obliterated.

STEVE: There were no wings.
There were no uh fuselage.

There was no, there was no tail section.

There were no aircraft seats.

There was just papers,
papers everywhere and uh

the strong smell of aviation fuel.

NARRATOR: It doesn't take
long for Sheriff Steve Bolts

to reach a grim conclusion.

No one has survived the crash.

STEVE: We're making
a frantic search

throughout this remote cow
pasture looking for survivors

and we can't even find
deceased human beings,

much less human beings that had survived.

NARRATOR: Most catastrophic
aircraft accidents happen

on takeoff or landing.

A shallow impact angle can sometimes leave

large sections of the plane intact,

giving passengers and
crew a chance at survival.

The 43 people aboard flight
1771 had no chance at all.

This is one of the worst air
disasters in California history.

INVESTIGATOR: Come
on up here guys.

NARRATOR: The day after the crash,

investigators from both
the National Transportation

Safety Board and the FBI are on the scene.

INVESTIGATOR: You ever
seen anything like this?

This is gonna be a long day guys.

RICHARD: We knew that
gunshots had been heard

by the air traffic controllers.

(gunshots).

JAMES (over radio):
Squawk 77, squawk 77.

We've had a gun fired
onboard the aircraft.

RICHARD: If the reports
of gunshots were accurate

then I realized immediately that we had

crime aboard an aircraft for which the FBI

had primary jurisdiction.

NARRATOR: But the reports
may not be accurate.

The pilots and controllers
may have been mistaken.

Even though speculation

about the gunman's identity is widespread,

it's up to the NTSB to

determine exactly what happened
on Flight 1771.

BOB: One of the things
you have to avoid in

accident investigation
is preconceived notions.

For example, most of us never

turn on the radio, never watch
television on the way to the

scene because, even though

you might not consciously be aware of it,

you can get front loaded with

information and when you get
there you may subconsciously

start looking for things to
substantiate that background

so you try to arrive on scene with

a totally objective
view of what's going on.

NARRATOR: While NTSB investigators
try to determine the cause of the crash,

law enforcement agents have
questions of their own.

STEVE: It's establishing who had motive,
establishing who had access,

establishing who was the intended victim.

INVESTIGATOR (off-screen):
Right there.

They should be somewhere right in there.

NARRATOR: The FBI is searching
for evidence of a crime,

the NTSB for clues about the crash.

If they can recover the black
boxes they may find both.

DENNIS: With the total
destruction of the aircraft,

I mean you had limited
amounts of information that

you could gather from the wreckage.

BOB: At this point, the most important
thing is to get the

cockpit voice recorder and get
away from the speculation

and see what the cockpit voice
recorder tells us factually.

RICHARD: The flight recorders tell
the tale of what happens to the aircraft.

They're very important in reconstructing
the events that brought the airplane down.

INVESTIGATOR: The impact comes in this
way, then the tail.

They should be somewhere in here.

I think that's it.

NARRATOR: After hours of searching through
the shattered remains,

the effort finally pays off.

They recover the plane's two black boxes.

DENNIS: The first recorder
that was recovered

was the cockpit
voice recorder and that was recognized

by its orange cover and all that
that was still, although badly mangled,

was still recognizable as a recorder.

NARRATOR: The second black box
has suffered even heavier damage.

The flight data recorder
captures critical information

about the aircraft's performance.

INVESTIGATOR: What
a mess. What a mess.

DENNIS: It had been so badly mangled

it wasn't recognizable
as a flight data recorder.

NARRATOR: Both recorders will be sent to
the NTSB laboratory in Washington.

It is far from certain whether the data
they hold can be successfully retrieved.

Without it, investigators may never know
what happened on flight 1771.

BOB: That's about the first thing you do
when you get on scene,

find the cockpit voice recorder.

You can't over emphasize how
important that was in this case

because we had no
airframe left to work with.

We really had no wreckage in
the normal sense of the word.

NARRATOR: At the NTSB laboratory
in Washington, Dennis Grossi

examines flight 1771's badly
damaged cockpit voice recorder.

DENNIS: The case itself
was basically crushed.

It was bent in like somebody had grabbed
it and pushed it together like that

uh and this is hardened steel
and we assessed the impact

force as around five thousand Gs,

just based on the deformation
of the crash enclosure.

NARRATOR: The recorder, the aircraft and
everyone onboard suffered an impact force

five thousand times the force of gravity.

The world's best fighter pilots can handle
a sustained force of nine Gs.

In a crash, the human body can sometimes
survive one hundred Gs for a split second.

A force fifty times as strong
is difficult to comprehend.

Dennis Grossi knows the immense impact

may have ruined any
chance of hearing the last words

from the cockpit of flight 1771.

REPORTER (over TV): No crash investigation
is routine but among the jigsaw puzzle

of pieces from flight 1771, investigators

are looking for something very
different, perhaps a gun.

NARRATOR: Finding the weapon
could help the FBI identify who

might have fired shots
onboard flight 1771.

But for the NTSB, gunfire alone
does not explain this accident.

A bullet should not bring
down a modern commercial jet.

BOB: There's a lot of
misconception about decompression

and about whether or not a, for example, a

single shot could bring down
an aircraft and if it's,

if it's simply a shot through the fuselage
of the aircraft the answer would be no.

NARRATOR: It takes a much
larger hole in the fuselage

for there to be an
explosive decompression,

the kind of hole that led to one of
the deadliest air disasters of all time.

In 1974, a faulty cargo
door blew off Turkish Airlines flight 981.

The decompression caused
the cabin floor to collapse,

severing the flight control cables.

The crash killed all 346 people onboard.

BOB: The aircraft would normally
not come down

just from a bullet
hole with no other implications.

It just wouldn't be enough to cause a,
an explosive decompression,

which is what you almost have to
have to bring the aircraft down.

NARRATOR: If a gunshot didn't bring
the plane down, then investigators,

need to find out what did.

At the NTSB lab in Washington,

work to recover flight 1771's
cockpit voice recording has

produced a surprising result.

Despite suffering huge impact forces,
the audiotape is still intact.

DENNIS (off-screen): All
right, let's give it a listen.

NARRATOR: The first 28 minutes of the tape
reveal a routine flight.

GREGG (over recorder): It's
gonna be Nintendo.

NARRATOR: The crew was trying
to find out when the turbulence

they had been flying through would end.

GREGG: Can you ask
them how it's been?

JAMES: Center, PSA 1771.
Any reports on the ride ahead?

We've had a little continuous light chop.

MAN (over radio): PSA, this is
Rocky Mountain Center.

It's not too bad.

DENNIS: We hear the flight crew talk,
you know, do their normal procedures.

NARRATOR: But in the final two minutes,
events take a chilling turn.

DENNIS: Sure sounds
like a gunshot.

And then all of a sudden they hear and we
hear on the recording this gunshot.

NARRATOR: The tape confirms what
the pilots had reported, two gunshots.

(gunshots)

GREGG (over recorder):
God. That was a gun.

JAMES (over recorder):
Yeah, I know.

Squawk 77, squawk 77.

We've had a gun fired
onboard the aircraft.

RICHARD: It was actually uh a
very sobering moment because

we realized that we were listening to
two people communicating with each other,

the pilot and copilot,
uh in a very routine flight

that suddenly became anything but routine.

It was something that one
doesn't quickly forget.

NARRATOR: Investigators listen

as the situation becomes
increasingly disturbing.

RICHARD: The door to the cockpit was heard
to open and a female voice,

presumably the flight attendant,
was heard to say in a voice

that was filled with alarm.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT: There's
a problem captain.

BOB: And we heard a voice, a male voice
which we presumed to be the captain,

saying what's the nature of the problem.

GREGG: What's the problem?

DAVID (off-screen):
I'm the problem.

(gunshots).

NARRATOR: Investigators now
know for certain that the killer

was a man and that he
shot the flight crew.

DENNIS (off-screen): It's always startling
when you hear something like that,

when you hear the commission of a murder.

As accident investigators,
you just don't hear that.

This was a very unusual recording.

NARRATOR: A flight attendant
and both pilots are shot.

DENNIS: That's
five shots so far.

RICHARD (off-screen): And uh then we could
hear the cockpit door shut again

and another final shot, the sixth shot.

(gunshot)

NARRATOR: Before the tape ends, they hear
one last ominous sound.

DENNIS: The plane's in a dive.
The engines are over revving.

BOB: Within about five seconds we
picked up what's called windscreen noise.

In other words, you could
tell that the aircraft was accelerating.

RICHARD: That noise
increased in its pitch.

We learned of course that it was
going into a dive at that point.

NARRATOR: 65 seconds after
the murder of its crew,

flight 1771 smashes into
the California hills.

RICHARD: It helped us to, to understand
what we were investigating,

the heinousness of the crime
that we were investigating.

NARRATOR: The CVR recording changes
the NTSB's role in the case.

DENNIS: Let me
know if I can help.

It just confirms that this
wasn't an accident,

that it was in fact a crime and the FBI

would be taking over the
investigation from here on out.

BOB: The FBI, bear in mind,
knows how to investigate crime.

They don't necessarily know how to
investigate an aircraft accident so we,

we would go ahead and do our
normal investigative procedures

and make that information
available to the FBI.

NARRATOR: The FBI is
investigating a murder.

But solving it is now just
one of their priorities.

GREGG (over recorder):
What's the problem?

MAN (over recorder):
I'm the problem.

NARRATOR: The CVR recording has
highlighted another pressing issue.

RICHARD: Somehow someone managed
to get a gun on that plane.

NARRATOR: A weapon was smuggled through
LAX, one of the world's busiest airports.

Investigators wonder how the shooter
managed to evade airport security.

RICHARD: Let's find out how that
guy got on the plane, all right?

NARRATOR: If the FBI can't find answers
soon, more lives could be at risk.

Two days after the downing of flight 1771,
investigators are still combing through

the wreckage for a piece of evidence
rarely found at a crash site,

a murder weapon.

INVESTIGATOR: That's a hydraulic line,
probably from the main gear.

BOB (off-screen): The search for the gun
was very frustrating because we knew

that that played a major
role in what had happened.

We needed to know for sure
uh that the gun was there.

I mean it's a supposition,

a pretty good supposition
that there's a gun involved.

RICHARD: We weren't sure that,
that we would succeed

because the field of debris was so wide

and the impact had reduced the airplane to
so many small pieces.

NARRATOR: While the search for
the gun continues in California,

NTSB investigators in Washington
try to determine what caused

flight 1771 to go into a sudden
dive after the crew was shot.

Dennis Grossi believes the answer may lie
in the shattered remains of the FDR,

the Flight Data Recorder.

DENNIS (off-screen): The internal magazine
that held the tape was the

only part that was actually recovered.

The rest was, was not recovered.

NARRATOR: Worse still, almost all the tape
that records data is gone,

torn from the machine when
it slammed into the ground.

DENNIS: This was the worst
damage I've ever seen.

NARRATOR: Grossi examines a
critical part of the recorder,

the tape heads that lay down
data onto the magnetic tape.

He finds a tiny piece of
recording tape has survived.

DENNIS (off-screen): The magazine didn't
survive and the tape itself

was destroyed except for about a
six to eight inch piece of tape

that ran around the recording
heads and the capstan.

NARRATOR: With such a short
piece of tape, it's doubtful

there will be any useful
information on it at all.

DENNIS: We worked real hard at
trying to get all the data that

we could off of that little piece of tape.

NARRATOR: Investigators in California

finally find what
they've been hunting for,

the barrel of a gun.

BOB: The gun was found by one of
the FBI agents uh pretty much

in the middle of where
the aircraft impacted.

RICHARD (off-screen): We were very, very
fortunate when we found the gun.

It was an unbelievable stroke of luck.

NARRATOR: It's not just any gun.

It's a 44 caliber Magnum.

RICHARD: The 44 Magnum was considered the
most powerful handgun that you can have.

NARRATOR: But the barrel
alone isn't enough.

They need the rest of the weapon.

Fortunately, they find it, the cylinder
with six spent cartridges.

RICHARD (off-screen): Its
frame was very powerfully constructed so

for it to tear the barrel off just
suggests the power of the crash impact.

NARRATOR: The shattered pistol
leads to a morbid discovery.

BOB (off-screen): When we found
what was left of the gun, there

was a portion of the finger between
the trigger and the trigger guard.

That went back to the FBI
lab at Quantico, Virginia.

NARRATOR: Lab analysis may
help solve a mystery that hangs

over the entire investigation.

The FBI has a weapon,
a crime scene and 42 murder victims.

What's missing is proof of the identity
of the 43rd person onboard, the killer.

RICHARD (over TV): We uh in
our investigation today here at the site

have located a weapon and that
weapon is going to be examined

and of course any
connection between it and the

crime will be more fully developed.

RICHARD: We needed to determine
a motive

for why someone would do such a thing.

Somebody would have had
to fire those gunshots

and there had to be a reason for it.

INVESTIGATOR: It's part of a
seat and part of the frame.

BOB: Really as far as the investigation on
scene,

it's, it's totally NTSB as far as
the kicking the tin if you will

uh but we were able to answer
questions that might arise from

the FBI investigation on the scene.

As I say, they don't have the expertise
to know what to look for

but from the criminal aspects of it,
they certainly know what to ask about.

NARRATOR: At the crash site,

the NTSB has recovered a piece of wreckage
that could help explain

what happened on flight 1771,
a fragment of a passenger seat.

RICHARD: We actually
found a seat that had a bullet hole in it.

NARRATOR: If they can determine exactly
where the seat was located

then PSA's passenger seating records

could give investigators the name
of another one of the victims shot

before the plane went down.

(gunshots)

Dennis Grossi has done all he can

to salvage data from the
small fragment of tape recovered

from the flight data recorder.

DENNIS: I was able to decode
that little strip of tape

and I got the last seconds.

NARRATOR: It does contain data,
but only six seconds worth.

Investigators learn that in
its final moments

the aircraft was operating
normally with no

mechanical problems, except for one thing.

Someone had pushed
the control column forward,

forcing the plane into a steep dive.

The aircraft accelerated
to the speed of sound.

(explosion)

BOB: It went from 22,000 feet with cruise
power in all four engines.

NARRATOR: Investigators now
understand why only very small

pieces of wreckage were
found at the crash site.

DENNIS: When the aircraft hit at
such a high speed,

it impacted and basically compressed
the earth and then,

then it released and it blew everything
back out of the hole.

NARRATOR: The heavy impact propelled

some debris straight back
into the air before it

could be singed by the explosion.

DENNIS (off-screen): All the
light material,

all of the paper on the aircraft, any uh,

any of the insulation material
on the aircraft,

all that light stuff got
blown up into the air

and then the wind carried
it for I believe miles.

NARRATOR: The fact that the
plane was forced into a dive

explains why PSA 1771 crashed so quickly.

It also adds even greater urgency to
the FBI investigation.

Since it was almost certainly the killer's
hand on the controls,

this is now the worst mass
murder in California history.

But investigators still don't have enough
evidence to be certain who the killer was,

nor who he was trying to kill.

Was it the work of a madman who
wanted to commit mass murder?

Or, did the killer target one
particular passenger and coldly

sacrifice everyone else on board?

NARRATOR: The FBI investigation
into the onboard shooting

and fatal crash of PSA flight 1771

has uncovered a lapse in security at LAX.

It may explain how a gun was
smuggled onto the aircraft.

RICHARD: Any number of people
in the airport could bypass

the security screening that was going on.

NARRATOR: Agent Bretzing learns
that airline employees with

valid identification are allowed
to bypass security at LAX.

ROBERT: What they had set up
is a bypass

for crew members and airport employees,

actually anybody that
had the proper badge.

You would show your badge and
they would allow you to bypass

both the metal detector
and the X-ray unit.

RICHARD: It was a
big uh loophole.

NARRATOR: Bretzing knows
the killer was a man.

And from flight 1771's passenger manifest,

he can see that there
were four male passengers who

worked for either Pacific Southwest or its
parent airline, US Air.

RICHARD: It's one of these guys.

ROBERT: We suppose that he did in fact
bypass security carrying the weapon.

NARRATOR: Investigators need to
prove conclusively

who smuggled the gun on board.

At the FBI laboratory,

forensic specialists analyze the piece
of skin found in the trigger guard.

A technician is able to get a fingerprint
from the skin fragment.

In search of a match, he compares the
print to those on file for the four male

passengers who could
have bypassed security.

And he finds a match.

RICHARD: There was enough of the
forefinger that they were able

to peel open and then match it.

NARRATOR: Just days after the
crash that claimed 43 lives,

the FBI has positively
identified their killer.

BOB: That was a key element
in the investigation.

NARRATOR: His name
is David Burke.

RICHARD (off-screen): David
Burke cleaned the airline.

He was one of those employees
who would go in

after it landed
and help clean up the inside.

NARRATOR: Investigators now know

David Burke smuggled
a gun onboard flight 1771.

What they now need to explain is why.

RICHARD: A motive gives
you understanding.

It helps to develop a
full mosaic of the crime.

Knowing the motive you're able to
conclusively determine what happened.

NARRATOR: Day three
at the crash site.

Still sifting through the
strewn remains of the plane,

investigators uncover a bizarre

but telling piece of evidence,
one that points directly to

the motive behind David Burke's crime.

RICHARD: During the search, one of our
people found an air sickness bag and knew

immediately that it was a
pertinent piece to the puzzle.

NARRATOR: Because he pushed the
plane into such a steep dive,

Burke unwittingly ensured that the vital
clue could be discovered.

RICHARD: The uh air sickness bag had
a very ominous message penned on it.

NARRATOR: Burke had written the
unsigned note during the flight.

He expressed a grudge
against a man called Ray.

RICHARD: Hi, Ray.

I think it's sort of ironical
that we end up like this.

I asked for some leniency
for my family, remember?

Well I got none and you'll get none.

That was the message that we recovered
from that air sickness bag.

NARRATOR: The airsickness bag is the
conclusive clue

they've been searching for,

the clue that establishes
David Burke's motive.

The Ray in the note is identified
as airline station manager Ray Thompson.

He worked for PSA's
parent company, US Air.

He was also David Burke's former boss.

RICHARD: Ray Thomson
was the supervisor.

NARRATOR: By now, Bretzing has also
learned that Burke had a troubled history,

both with the company and with the law.

REPORTER (over TV): Burke had
worked for US Air for 14 years,

most of them at the airport in
Rochester, New York.

BOB: Uh there was allegations of,

of criminal activity when
he was back in Rochester.

REPORTER (over TV): Burke was someone they
had watched carefully

for narcotic trafficking and larceny.

NARRATOR: Allegations that
Burke smuggled cocaine

on commercial flights were never proven.

DALE: Well basically he just apparently
stayed one step ahead of us but,

but the bottom line is
that he wasn't charged.

BOB: He moved to the west coast

presumably to kind of get away
from the heat if you would.

NARRATOR: But three weeks before the crash
Burke ran into more trouble.

He was fired from the company
after being caught on tape

helping himself to the
in-flight bar proceeds.

RICHARD (off-screen): He had stolen some
money from the fund that the

flight attendants use when
they're making change and

he had stolen what amounted to $69

and this was the straw that
broke the camel's back.

NARRATOR: Three weeks after being fired,
Burke was given an opportunity to appeal.

ROBERT: Mr. Burke had been terminated
several weeks prior to the flight.

RAY: Thanks for
coming in, David.

ROBERT: He then came back for an appeal
hearing on the day of the flight.

RAY: I've reviewed your file.

RICHARD: He was
terminated by Ray Thomson.

RAY: Your appeal
it's been denied.

NARRATOR: Under intense financial pressure
Burke was near the end of his rope.

DAVID: Why you gotta
be such a jerk?

RICHARD: That termination
interview was, was not a, a placid one.

RAY: My decision's
final, Mr. Burke.

DAVID: Thank you very much.

NARRATOR: As he left Thomson's office,

Burke made a remark that
hinted at plans for revenge.

RICHARD: The secretary had said
"David, I hope you have a nice day."

And David Burke, the suspect, paused
at the door, turned to her and said...

DAVID: Oh I plan to
have a very nice day.

BOB (off-screen): When
he was fired he still had his credentials.

You gotta remember, this was 1987.

Security was a whole lot
different than it is now.

RICHARD: What have
you got there?

NARRATOR: Investigators now know

that in the days leading up to
the crash David Burke went from

aggrieved ex-employee to a
man coldly planning murder.

Now they need to find out all they can

about his movements
on the day of the crash.

RICHARD: What can you
tell me about David Burke?

NARRATOR: After his meeting
with Thomson,

he went to his
locker, possibly to get the gun.

RICHARD (off-screen): But he went to
his locker

the day of that flight prior
to the flight.

Whether he retrieved his gun from
the locker or not, we are not, not sure.

NARRATOR: Instead of returning
to the office,

Burke decided to
buy a ticket for flight 1771,

a flight he knew Ray Thomson would be on.

RICHARD: Ray Thomson lived
in San Francisco

and he flew regularly on that flight to

return to San Francisco
at the end of the day.

It was common knowledge
among the employees that

Ray Thomson would be on
that, on that flight.

NARRATOR: Why Burke opted to kill so many
others along with his former boss is

a question that defies
rational explanation.

RICHARD: The average person
certainly would not act with the

rage and the vengeance that had to consume
David Burke prior to this act.

One can only imagine that

there must have been something
else wrong with David Burke.

ROBERT: He just decided to take it out as
an act of revenge against a company

and I don't know that there's any other
motivation we can come up with.

NARRATOR: It's clear Burke's attack
on flight 1771 was meticulously planned.

But exactly how events unfolded once
his rampage began is still uncertain.

NTSB investigators have provided
a big piece of the puzzle.

They've been able to match up

the bullet-punctured seat
fragment with an exact onboard

location, row four, seat C.

Records show that on flight 1771
that seat was unoccupied

but the seat directly
in front of that empty seat,

was occupied, by Ray Thomson.

The finding points to the sheer power
of Burke's 44 caliber handgun.

His first two shots pierced
not one but two airline seats.

(gunshots)

RICHARD: The bullet hole would
have been

uh made as the bullet
passed through Ray Thomson and

then entered that seat and
left a bullet hole there.

(gunshots)

NARRATOR: They now know that
Burke shot at least four people

during his rage-filled assault
on flight 1771,

Ray Thomson and three crew members.

That accounts for five shots,

but investigators
heard six shots on the tape.

They must account for them all.

The gunshot sounds were picked up
by a microphone in the cockpit.

(gunshots)

By comparing the sound pattern
of each shot,

investigators can determine if they were
fired the cockpit or the passenger cabin.

(gunshot)

RICHARD: The shots that were fired in
the uh in the plane, not in the cockpit

but in the plane were, were
distinct but muffled.

NARRATOR: Other shots
were louder and clearer,

indicating they were fired
closer to the CVR microphone.

RICHARD: The shots that were fired
in the cockpit were very loud.

We had three shots that were
fired outside the cockpit and

three shots that were
fired inside the cockpit.

NARRATOR: Investigators don't know
who was shot with the final bullet,

just that it was fired in the cabin.

It's enough for them to finally
piece together a picture of the

horrific final moments onboard PSA 1771.

♪ ♪

RAY: What the hell?

RICHARD: You can imagine what
Ray Thomson must have thought

as this person whom he had just
terminated a few hours before

walks past him in the airline,
hands him this note and then

probably goes into the men's room.

And he's reading this note
with its ominous message.

NARRATOR: Next, they hear the sound
of the lavatory door opening.

RICHARD (off-screen): So we're, we're
assuming that he handed Ray the note

went into the restroom where he
took out the gun, came back out,

we heard the door close again
just before the shots.

DAVID: Ray!

(gunshots)

RICHARD: Ray Thomson probably has the most
merciful of all the deaths on that plane.

NARRATOR: In less than a minute,
a routine flight has become a nightmare.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT (off-screen):
There's a problem captain.

GREGG (off-screen):
What's the problem?

(gunshot)

RICHARD (off-screen):
He was very careful.

He had done the planning
this far fairly well and uh we believe he,

he followed through with that plan.

DAVID (off-screen):
I'm the problem.

(gunshots)

(screaming)

RICHARD: It wouldn't take much
knowledge or experience on a

passenger part to know that they
were in deep, deep trouble.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT: There's
a problem captain.

(gunshot)

NARRATOR: After
shooting his former boss

(gunshots)

and three crew members,

David Burke pushed flight 1771 into a dive
and left the cockpit.

The airline's chief pilot was
now the only person onboard who

could pull the plane out of the dive.

RICHARD: An off duty pilot may
have been moving himself forward

to try to render whatever
assistance he could once

he realized something
drastic was happening.

PILOT: What the
hell are you doing?

You gotta let me in there.

Don't do this.
Come on.

NARRATOR: But Burke
had one bullet left.

PILOT: What the
hell are you doing?

RICHARD (off-screen): That may have
accounted for the sixth shot.

There are some who speculate that
David Burke was taking his own life.

The evidence suggests otherwise.

Had David Burke been taking his
own life, the gun would have

fallen from his hand after
he had shot himself.

NARRATOR: But since a fragment
of Burke's fingertip was recovered

from the trigger guard,

Bretzing reasons that the killer
was alive, holding onto the gun,

until the very moment of impact.

(alarms sounding)

RICHARD (off-screen): Alarms
were sounding in the cockpit.

There was increased noise
of the plane plummeting

and just before impact it became silent.

They tell us that it actually
broke the sound barrier.

Of course, it would have been
a horrifying experience,

the final few seconds of their lives.

NARRATOR: One man's rage meant two minutes
of pure terror for 42 people.

(explosion)

REPORTER (over TV): The FBI believes
one man was responsible

for the crash of PSA flight 1771 in
the hills of San Luis Obispo County,

in which all 43 onboard were killed.

RICHARD (over TV): With all of the
evidence that we have recovered here

that we would have more
than sufficient to charge

David Burke with the violation
of the air piracy statute.

NARRATOR: The unprecedented
crime is solved.

But aviation authorities are
left with a troubling question:

Could it happen again?

The tragedy of flight 1771 provoked action
from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The body that regulates
the airline industry

took urgent measures to tighten security.

ROBERT: The FAA came out and, and, uh,
canceled the bypass authority

so therefore air crews and
employees would have to go

through the normal screening,
as any passenger would.

BOB: Now it's uh it's required that, uh,
any employee that leaves an airline,

whether they've been fired or
quit or retired or whatever,

must turn their credentials
in immediately.

Getting on an aircraft with a gun now,
I won't say that it's impossible,

but it's, it's next to impossible.

NARRATOR: But the new measures
would not prevent

the world's deadliest hijacking incident.

The 9/11 attacks would usher in
sweeping new airline security procedures.

ROBERT: After 9/11, several security gaps
were certainly plugged.

NARRATOR: There are now
federal air marshals

onboard many domestic US flights.

ROBERT: These are armed officers
on flights in plain clothes.

NARRATOR: Cockpit doors have
been reinforced with Kevlar and

they stay locked throughout all flights.

ROBERT: The doors are built so that
they're very hard to get through.

They're ballistically sound.

If David Burke was on a plane today,
when he got to the cockpit,

he couldn't have gotten
in with the weapon he had

so he would have been able to
still uh injure or kill people

in the back but he could not
have brought the plane down.

NARRATOR: Finally, many domestic airline
pilots are now allowed to carry firearms.

All of these measures have made
flying safer, but nothing can

completely eliminate the risk
of another David Burke.

ROBERT: Well in my view, aviation security
has been heightened tremendously

but we still have a ways to go
and aviation will always be a target.

(music plays through credits)