The aircraft diverted to CFB Goose Bay, a military air base also used for civilian flights, and landed at 15:42 UTC (12:42 local time)[2][3] after suffering an uncontained failure on its number 4 (rightmost) engine while flying 150 kilometres (93 mi; 81 nmi) southeast of Paamiut, Greenland.

[citation needed] Air France issued a press release stating that an investigation was underway to determine the cause of the engine failure, including representatives of the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA, the French aviation accident investigation bureau), Airbus and Air France.

Advisors from Airbus, Air France and Engine Alliance (a partnership between General Electric and Pratt & Whitney) also flew to Goose Bay.

[17] The BEA stated that "the recovery of the missing parts, especially of the fan hub fragments, was the key to supporting the investigation" and initiated a large search operation including synthetic-aperture radar overflights on a Dassault Falcon 20, but failed to locate the crucial components in 2018, before returning in 2019.

[20] The fan hub impact is believed to have made a small crater in the ice sheet that quickly filled with snow before initial search activities.

The EAD required a visual inspection of the fan hub within a timescale of two to eight weeks, depending on the number of cycles an engine had operated since new.

[24] Air France originally announced plans to ferry the aircraft back to Europe for repair, with an inoperable replacement engine installed, for reasons of weight and balance.

[25] The damaged engine was flown to East Midlands Airport in the United Kingdom for examination by General Electric during the period 23–25 November 2017.

[citation needed] Recovery of the fan hub from the Greenland ice sheet took place on 29–30 June 2019 after 20 months and four phases of complex aerial and ground search operations to locate the various elements from the engine.