On October 30, 1972, at approximately 20:40 CET, the aircraft crashed into a hill in the countryside between Corato, Ruvo di Puglia, and Poggiorsini, in the Province of Bari, causing 27 fatalities: 3 crew members and 24 passengers.

The ATI technicians who participated in the inquiry commission stated that the aircraft had "belly-landed" on the terrain at over 400 kilometers per hour, causing the lower part of the fuselage to open, and during the slide on the rocky ground, everything inside spilled out.

[3] The pilot's communication stating that he was preparing for a visual landing (at the time, the airport was not equipped with radar equipment for traffic control or the Instrument Landing System) and the aircraft's altimeter, found among the wreckage indicating 1,450 feet (approximately 442 meters), the height of the crash site, led to the hypothesis of pilot error.

[3] The causes of the accident were the subject of various hypotheses, including one that attributed the crash to a malfunction of the VOR on board the aircraft due to the presumed existence of abnormal magnetic forces in the area.

[4] However, tests conducted by a group of CICAP members and published in Query, disproved the theories concerning the existence of particular anomalies in the Earth's magnetic field in the disaster area.