>> mass murder by plane. a look at commercial planes deliberately crashed. >> how investigators decipher what happened on board as they comb through the communication. >> hello everybody i'm frank somerville and welcome to a second look. investigators said the crash of that german passenger plane in the french alps was probably a

deliberate act by a co-pilot with a mental problem. 150 people on board died. pilots have deliberately crashed a plane eight times over the last 40 years. in october of 1999 an egyptian air flight was lost. 217 people on board were killed. two investigations were launched. the egyptian said mechanical problems caused the crash. but as bryan ben miller reports, american investigators said the co-pilot deliberately took down that plane. >> 30 minutes after egypt air flight 990 departed new york it was lying in pieces at the bottom of the atlantic in nantucket. the plane a boeing 767 similar to this one had leveled off at 33,000 feet bound for cairo. when the flight data recorder showed unusual activity in what would be the last two minutes

of the flight. >> the first event we note is the auto pilot disconnecting. about eight seconds later, the airplane appears the airplane begins what appears to be a controlled descend. >> reporter: someone at the controls then put the plane in a dive. plum meting 18,000 feet in 20 seconds. the plane gained altitude briefly before the crash. >> in the english language we say oh god, oh jesus. >> reporter: now the federal government now blames that pilot for the crash. the ntsb says he was alone in the cockpit when he put the plane in a dive. then the pilot mamud el jabashi

returned. in the recorder he is heard crying, pull with me, pull with me. >> normally in the cockpit the one pilot is flying the airplane and is supposed to fly the airplane and the other pilot is supposed to handle emergencies and to take care of the radios. and since we had no broadcast from this airplane, i find that unusual. and the fact that both of them were struggling with the controls that would be unusual too. because the other pilot shouldn't be on the controls. >> reporter: egypt air has defended its staff. >> our pilots are frequently checked, they are checked physically, psychologically, and everything. >> the airline continues to suspect mechanical problems in the tail. the ntsb says they found no evidence of that. the co-pilots nephew also rejects the findings. he said a prayer muttered in

the cockpit was not enough proof. >> if anyone would like to hang on to life it's going to be gamid. he's a very happy man. i don't know where all these things came from. he was very happy that he finally will get some rest and spend some time with his family because he spent his life traveling. >> reporter: the ntsb does not offer a motive for the crash. but the l.a. times records, that batooby's boss was on the plane and had just given him bad news. a former egypt air pilot tells the l.a. time that is the crash was more revenge than suicide. >> we come here to recite our prayers and remember with deepest affection the 273 men,

women and children who have been physically taken from us. >> reporter: the ntsb report doesn't talk about why the egypt air co-pilot put the airplane on a crash. but that's because of politics according to the l.a. times. i'm bryan banmiller for a second look. still to come on a second look. >> we had the hand and we had the gun. and could put him on the airplane at that time. >> reading the wreckage. how investigators put together the clues in a bay area plane crash that pointed to murder suicide. and how a message on an airsickness bag held investigators to solve a plane crash near san luis obispo that took the life of everyone on board.

welcome back to a second look. pacific airlines flight 773 crashed near san ramon.

all 43 people on board survived. but the question is, what happened. how the pieces came together to tell a chilling story of a passenger with a gun. >> it was may 7, 1964 just before 7:00 in the morning. pacific airlines flight 773 was on its way from reno to sfo when something went horribly wrong. >> i was just getting ready to go out to school. and i heard this loud sound and i looked out the door and heard this sound. it was a horrible explosion. >> >> ernie was the best. he was smooth, methodical with everything he did. everybody wanted to fly like

ernie. >> reporter: so what really happened? >> the plane actually went in at a pretty steep angle. so as you looked at the accident site you could almost see the outline of an airplane and then there was this center where the main cabin was. >> a few days after a crash he listened to a garbled tape that a cell laboratory has to decipher. it's a final message from andrus almost impossible to decipher with an open ear. >> after a pain staking search through the crash site a contra costa county sheriff deputy found a 357 magnum and traced the name of the owner then investigators located something else. >> eventually we found the hand of the owner. so now we had the hand and we had the gun. and could put him on the

airplane at that time. >> authorities linked the hand and the handgun to passenger francisco gonzalez of san francisco. gonzalez had been on the 1960 philipino yachting team but then had financial problems. he was threatening suicide, and the day before the flight bought flight insurance from a machine and a handgun. gonzalez boarded flight 773, waited until the plane was minutes from landing then walked into the cockpit. he shot pilot clark first then co-pilot andrus then himself. pirate ernie crost daughter says the results of the investigation put to rest any rumors. >> at the time, i was so relieved because i had heard media people saying, wow

captain clark was really distraught. his wife died accidental a year earlier and i thought, oh my god my dad would never do that. >> reporter: the government required cockpit doors to be locked from the inside it's a practice that still happens today. but since the 9/11 attack doors got more heavily reenforced. >> i always felt a cockpit lock was very important. it was between me and the passengers on the back. i always felt good about that and knew it was called the clark lock after my dad. >> reporter: some pilots liked the idea, others did not. >> if someone enters the cockpit there's no way you can if -- you can turn around. >> i personally did not want to become an airline pilot so i could have gunfights in the cockpit and be fighting for my

life. >> reporter: the idea of guns in cockpits went down. but after september 11th some pilots demanded to be allowed to carry guns in the cockpit and the faa agreed. here to come, it was supposed to be a routine commute from los angeles to a san francisco. one man with a grudge and a gun came on board and a nightmare unfolded.

welcome back to a second look. the jetliner crashed in robles. as george watson reported in the weeks following the crash the flight had been broadcast by a man who was eventually bent on revenge. >> on december 7, flight 1771 took off from los angeles.

it was bound for the most routine kind of flight. a routine commuter flight to san francisco. they all fell victim to a plot of murder, revenge and suicide. 43 of the people who died on that flight the very least deserve an explanation of who killed them and why. who were the 43 strangers who would find a common bond in death? they were just ordinary people. a woman had stopped off in los angeles while returning from new york. a bank manager was on a trip. a psa pilot on his way back to san francisco. a bank president and stewardess on her first flight. just normal people. but a message on an airplane

sickness bag would have a letter. hi ray, i asked for leniency for my family. i got none and you will get none. the man who wrote that note was carrying a bullet so powerful. authorities believe that david burke smuggled a gun on board the plane and subsequently caused it to crash killing everyone on board. according to our source, based on information from the cockpit voice recorder, this is what happened inside the plane. ray thompson was sitting in seat 3a. burke gave him a note written on an airsickness bag. burke shot thompson. >> he was squawking 7700 which is a special code. at that time, the controller said, say again. and the captain confirmed he

said i have an emergency, gunfire, and that was the last communications. >> then he forced a flight attendant to take him into the cockpit. once inside. she said captain someone has a problem. on the recorder a male voice responds, i am the problem. unknown until now, doug arthur a chief pilot out of los angeles who was also a passenger on the flight happened to be in the cockpit at the time. according to our source, burke immediately shot the flight attendant then shot arthur who was strapped into the jump seat. then burke shot the pilot and the co-pilot. one of the pilots was still alive. on the flight voice recorder you could hear him straining groaning trying to pull the plane out of a dive. apparently that was physically impossible because the plane was in such a steep dive. 10 seconds before the impact, a gunshot was found. investigators believe this was burke killing himself. back in the cabin it was a

hellish scene. carts and contents would be flying about as with luggage and anything else not tied down. but, the worse thing that would happen to these people in the next 90 seconds is that experts say they would not have lost consciousness. they would be aware of every moment of their torment. a psa pilot speculated what it might have been like to be a pilot and be on that plane. >> knowing an airplane so well and what it can do is probably sheer terror. because you don't have control over the situation. and that you have to just sit there and watch it. >> i was told that, that of the 13 witnesses eight heard loud shrieking noises prior to impact. >> reporter: gene cats the pilot who first heard the crash was at the scene in five minutes. dropping his plane to 3,000 feet he described the scene. >> it was an aircraft, it was broken into three main pieces.

all of which were engulfed in flames. with all structures on fire it was very evident that there were probably no survivors. >> emergency vehicles were on the scene in two hours. back in san francisco, people waiting for the routine flight to arrive began to realize something was wrong when they read the ominous message on the psa arrival's board. within two hours authorities had a suspect in the worse mass murder in california history. his name was david burke. david burke worked at u.s. air for 15 years the threads of his story lead back to the years he worked in rochester new york. the story begins in 1984 when rochester police suspected he was a major link in a complex drug traffic network with rochester international airport as the hub. >> if we've been involved in investigations with this individual for approximately three years on and off. we have seen nothing that would

indicate a violent behavior or violent pattern in our dealings with our officers or anyone else. >> reporter: they believe it was a drug operation that originated in burke's native jamaica. police believe that burke's job at the airport allowed burke job as a airline clerk. his own friends even had their suspicions. a friends of burke says quote, burke was a heavy duty cocaine dealer. he was dealing in quantity. he was using his airport connections to deal the stuff. but after living and working in california for about a year, he

was fired by u.s. air for allegedly stealing $69 from petty cash. he was fired from a job where he was making less than $30,000 a year. yet we find he was spending large sums of money even after he was fired. burke was investing in a variety of business ventures. back in rochester, burke's parents have their own explanation regarding their son's money and how he came to get it. >> the money did not come in from here. we worked but from outside. >> so you gave him money? >> i gave him money to invest money. >> no one knows what was said at that meeting, but it raises the question. why would burke a man who had money get so upset that he would go out and kill 24 people and himself. part of the problem may have been that burke found out that u.s. air was going to the los angeles city attorney the very next day to talk about burke.

what were they going to talk about? u.s. air has no comment. a laser was used to map the scattered wreckage. the fbi found a gun. >> the weapon belonged to burke is definitely the weapon that we found here at the scene with the six expended rounds. >> midnight thursday, the fbi found burke's hand. also on thursday, the fbi found the airsickness bag with the goodbye message. >> it's addressed to ray, it is unsigned. >> reporter: on friday the fbi confirmed the note was in david burke's hand writing. >> were david burke still alive we and the united states district attorney's office believe we have more than sufficient probable cause to have charged him with the crimes of crimes on board an aircraft. >> reporter: how did burke get

his firearm. a pacific southwest airline official had advised him the fbi agent had been allowed to bypass security screening as a familiar airline employee and therefor was not screened for weapons or destructiontive devices. the crash of flight 1771 did bring about some changes in the airline industry. as a result of that accident, federal law now requires that airlines immediately seize the credentials of any employee who is fired or who quits and airline employees now have to go through the same security screening as everyone else. the national transportation safety board noted that u.s. airlines locked bullet-proofed cockpit doors. when we come back on a second look. >> those erratic altitude

changes definitely say to me there was a struggle going on inside the aircraft. >> a year ago malaysian flight 370 and it's 239 people on board vanished. a look at what few clues investigators have as they continue their search for that missing plane.

it's now been more than a year since malaysian airline 370 disappeared with 239 people on board. on the days after the plane vanished investigators say one possibility is that someone in the cockpit may have intentionally crashed that boeing 777. >> reporter: malaysian police have searched the homes of both the pilot and co-pilot for clues for the whereabouts of flight 370. some experts are critical of the investigation saying the move is long overdue. >> for them to look this long to look into the pilot's home is really inexcusable. >> reporter: the plane was

flying a strange path. >> this movement are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane. >> those erratic altitude changes say to me there was a struggle going on inside that aircraft either it was from maybe a fire within the cockpit or a scuffle. >> reporter: and the plane turned west and went either northwest or southwest over the indian ocean. now details about the potential air path of malaysian aircraft says it appears the plane went north then around indonesia air space. that move may have been intentional. >> they go to these arbitration interceptions in the sky if you

will that air traffic control use this to direct traffic. so what it shows is, experienced pilots some where in the mix on this. >> reporter: that gives more creditability to the theory of malaysian authorities that a plane's disappearance was quote a deliberate act. >> in a report released near the one year anniversary of the disappearance of that plane, investigators said there's no evidence to suggest any kind of a motive for either the pilot or the co-pilot to bring down that plane. the report said no one in the cockpit and no one in the cabin crew showed any signs of social isolation, change in habits, self-neglect or drug or alcohol abuse. the report also revealed that the battery in one of two underwater beacons attached to the black boxes expired more than a year before the plane disappeared. this suggests that searchers looking for pings may have never even had a chance of detecting the signal from one of those devices. the australian government which

is leading the efforts to find the wreckage says that underwater search should be complete by may. it's unclear though where the search will go from there if nothing is found. and that's it for this week's second look. i'm frank somerville. see you next week.

(gasps) did you see it? does she know? this is the last thing she needs today. no! busy day at the dunphy compound. we have a wedding tonight, and this afternoon claire is debating duane bailey in the race for town council. (lowered voice) and now the "weekly saver" says that some voters find claire-- quote-- "angry and unlikable." to those voters, i say "wait till she sees this." no one can mention it to her. we can't have some unscientific poll shaking claire's confidence. phil... what poll? too late. she knows. who told her? what is this, a witch hunt? oh, my god. i have to go. well, i just don't think it's a big deal. i mean, how many people read the "weekly..." "saver"? "saver," anyway?