The plane, a Yakovlev Yak-42, was carrying 108 passengers and eight crew, and crashed about 7 kilometres (4.3 mi; 3.8 nmi) east of Ohrid Airport.

Air Traffic control was unable to satisfy the request for a bearing and the pilot of Flight 110 advised that he could not see the runway lights.

Among the passengers was a French United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) official in his mid-20s who had just returned from an assignment in war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina.

[5] Due to Flight 110 being the third aviation disaster in a sixteen-month period to take place in his country, Minister of Urban Planning, Civil Engineering, Communications and Ecology Antoni Pesev [mk; bg] resigned.

[8] The cause of the crash was attributed to a violation of the airport traffic pattern by the crew of Flight 110, who initiated a turn into rising terrain.