David Burke (born May 18, 1952) was a former employee of USAir, the airline that had recently purchased, and was in the process of absorbing, Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA). Burke had been terminated by USAir for petty theft of $69 from an airline fund and, after meeting with his supervisor in an unsuccessful attempt to be reinstated, he purchased a ticket on Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771, a daily flight from Los Angeles, California to San Francisco. Burke's supervisor, Raymond F. Thomson, took the flight regularly because he lived in San Francisco but worked at Los Angeles International Airport.

Using his USAir credentials, Burke, armed with a loaded .44 Magnum revolver that he had borrowed from a co-worker, was able to bypass the security checkpoint at Los Angeles International Airport. After boarding the plane, Burke wrote a message on an air-sickness bag. The note read:

Hi Ray. I think it's sort of ironical [sic] that we ended up like this. I asked for some leniency for my family. Remember? Well, I got none and you'll get none.

As the plane, a four engine British Aerospace BAe 146-200, cruised at 22,000 feet (6700 m) over the central California coast, the cockpit voice recorder recorded the sound of two shots being fired in the cabin. The cockpit door was opened and a female, presumed to be a flight attendant, told the cockpit crew "We have a problem". The captain replied, "What kind of problem?" Burke then announced "I'm the problem", then fired three more shots that incapacitated the pilots.

Several seconds later, the cockpit voice recorder picked up increasing windscreen noise as the airplane pitched down and began to accelerate. A final gunshot was heard and it is speculated that Burke shot himself. The plane then descended and crashed into the hillside of a cattle ranch at 4:16 p.m. in the Santa Lucia Mountains near Paso Robles and Cayucos. The plane was estimated to have crashed nose first at a speed of around 700 MPH, disintegrating into thousands of pieces. The force of the impact meant that 27 passengers were never identified.

Several federal laws were passed after the crash, including a law that required "immediate seizure of all airline employee credentials" after termination from an airline position. A policy was also put into place stipulating that all airline flight crew were to be subject to the same security measures as passengers.