All 176 people aboard the two aircraft were killed,[2]: 8 [3]: 5–6 [4][5] making it the world's deadliest mid-air collision at the time.

It carried 108 passengers, mostly German holiday-makers returning home at the end of a holiday on the Dalmatian coast, and a crew of five.

[3]: 2  The flight crew consisted of Captain Jože Krumpak (51), an experienced pilot with 10,157 flying hours, and First Officer Dušan Ivanuš.

The controller responded by instructing them to select transponder code 2312, and to call again on reaching the VOR:[3]: 1 This was the last communication with the Trident aircraft before the accident.

[citation needed] According to Pelin, he walked to the upper sector console holding JP550's flight progress strip.

[citation needed] By the time JP550 contacted the upper-sector controller at 10:14:04 it had reached the Zagreb VOR and was already climbing through flight level 325 (approximately 32,500 feet (9,900 m)).

The controller immediately asked for confirmation of the aircraft's level:[3]: 4 Realising the imminent danger of collision, Tasić instructed the JP550 to stop climbing.

[3]: 30  This meant that the British Airways plane, even if they overheard this conversation, would have very little chance of understanding their own imminent danger.

[citation needed] The controller's last-ditch attempt to avert catastrophe turned what would have been a near miss into the collision he was trying to prevent.

[3]: 5 [additional citation(s) needed] (Later, on hearing the recording of this call, Captain Kröse had difficulty in understanding his own words.

The last five metres of the DC-9's left wing had cut through the Trident's cockpit section and forward passenger compartment.

[3]: 5 The DC-9, now without over one-third of its left wing, went into an immediate nose-dive and slammed into the ground right-wing first, near the village of Dvorišće near Rakovec, 25 seconds after the collision.

"[6] Locals reported finding a boy, who was lying on a road near a field, and who displayed signs of life up to 15 minutes after the collision, but he eventually died.

[citation needed] A dramatised reconstruction of the events leading up to the accident, starring Antony Sher and entitled Collision Course, was made by Granada Television in 1979.

[14][citation needed] The events of the accident are also documented in a season 1 episode of Aircrash Confidential titled "Collisions", which was first aired on the Discovery Channel in 2011.