An investigation was carried out by officials from Great Britain, Cathay Pacific's parent company the Swire Group and the Hong Kong Police but efforts to retrieve wreckage and study the crash site were hampered by ongoing fighting in the region due to the Vietnam War.

After Saigon lost contact with the aircraft, they made an appeal for information to both Hong Kong and Taipei ACC which produced negative results.

[citation needed] The wreckage was located by a United States Army helicopter in "lightly wooded" terrain on a remote hilltop near Pleiku, still burning, not long after Saigon ACC lost contact.

[5] Although two bodies were retrieved almost immediately, the presence of hostile Vietcong forces nearby made it very difficult to examine the wreckage in depth.

A team of investigators from Cathay Pacific's parent company the Swire Group and the UK Civil Aviation Authority were sent to examine the area.

[4] Upon examining the available debris, it soon became clear that the aircraft had suffered some sort of structural problem and loss of control at cruising altitude, and that the low-altitude breakup was caused by the overstressing of the airplane during an uncontrolled descent.

An investigator working at the crash site summarised that the plane suffered an explosive decompression around 1pm local time when lunch was being served and that the passengers standing in the aisle or queuing for the lavatory and cabin crew members overseeing the meal service were sucked out of the aircraft as it disintegrated.

At an undetermined point in this descent, the horizontal stabilizer separated from the airplane entirely, and eventually the fuselage broke into the three sections initially found by searchers.