[3] Provided with twin CFM International CFM56-7B26 powerplants, the airframe last underwent maintenance checks on 25 December 2009 without any technical problems found.

[8]: 28–29 [9] The Boeing 737 took off from runway 21 at Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport in stormy weather,[4] with 82 passengers and eight crew members on board.

[12] The U.S. military, in response to a request from the Lebanese government, sent the guided missile destroyer USS Ramage, a Navy Lockheed P-3 Orion aircraft,[18] and the salvage ship USNS Grapple.

[20] UNIFIL sent three ships (among them the German minesweeper tender Mosel and the Turkish corvette Bozcaada)[20] and two helicopters to the scene.

[6][25] The Lebanese Civil Aviation Authority (LCAA) investigated the accident, with the assistance of the BEA, Boeing, and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) of the United States.

[26][27] Lebanese President Michel Suleiman stated before the flight data recorders were found that the accident was not due to terrorism.

The spectrum analysis suggests that the black soot "was organic" and it "most closely matched spectra from lubricating oils".

[8] The report concluded that "the probable causes of the accident were the flight crew's mismanagement of the aircraft's speed, altitude, headings, and attitude through inconsistent flight control inputs resulting in a loss of control and their failure to abide by CRM (Crew Resource Management) principles of mutual support and calling deviations".

In it, they pointed out that the halting of flight data and cockpit voice recordings at 1,300 feet (400 m), disappearing from radar at that time, and eyewitness reports of a fireball "clearly indicate that the aircraft disintegrated in the air due to explosion, which could have been caused by a shoot-down, sabotage, or lightning strike".