On 20 January 1992, the Airbus A320 operating the flight crashed into the slopes of the Vosges Mountains in Eastern France, near Mont Sainte-Odile, while on a non-precision approach at Strasbourg Airport.

The flight was cleared to descend to 5,000 ft and vectored to the ANDLO waypoint 11 nautical miles from the Strasbourg Airport VOR.

The crash site was not discovered until 22:35 UTC (4 hours and 15 minutes later) when a group of journalists were led to the wreckage by a surviving passenger, Nicolas Skourias.

The Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) found that Flight 148 crashed because the pilots left the autopilot set in Vertical Speed Mode instead of Flight Path Angle Mode and then set "33" for "3.3° descent angle", resulting in a high descent rate of 3,300 ft (1,000 m) per minute into terrain.

It is speculated that this was because Air Inter—facing ferocious competition from France's TGV high-speed trains—may have encouraged its pilots to fly fast at low level (up to 350 kn [650 km/h; 400 mph] below 10,000 ft [3,000 m], while other airlines generally do not exceed 250 kn [460 km/h; 290 mph]), and GPWS systems gave too many nuisance warnings.

Airbus modified the interface of the autopilot so that a vertical speed setting would be displayed as a four-digit number, preventing confusion with the Flight Path Angle mode.