[2][3] The captain was José Ignacio Ossa Aristizábal, the first officer was Fernando Pizarro Esguerra, and the flight engineer was Luis Jairo Castiblanco Vargas.

[7]: 80 [8] One account states that two unidentified men dressed in suits who worked for Escobar carried the bomb on board.

A young Colombian man named Alberto Prieto was duped into staying on the flight and activating the bomb once the aircraft had become airborne thus unknowingly killing himself; he had been told the device was just a recorder he had to turn on to record the conversation of a nearby couple of passengers; because of this, the man had been nicknamed "El Suizo", or "The Swiss", in reference to his role as a "suicide" bomber.

[7]: 81  Two Americans were among the dead, prompting the Bush administration to begin Intelligence Support Activity operations to find Escobar.

[14] On November 28, 2016, the Colombian newspaper El Espectador started publishing an investigative report, consisting of 8 chapters, on Flight 203.

[15] It argues that the explosion was caused by a malfunctioning fuel pump inside a tank which had been reported several times before.