On 26 September 1997, the aircraft flying the route crashed into mountainous woodlands near the village of Buah Nabar, Sibolangit, killing all 222 passengers and 12 crew members on board.

The FFCC model is a modified version of the A300B4 in which the flight engineer station is eliminated, and the relevant controls are simplified and relocated to be positioned on the overhead panel between the two pilots.

The two pilots aboard the accident flight were qualified to fly both the FFCC and the -600 model, however the adequacy of their conversion training between the two would later be called into question.

[citation needed] The aircraft was delivered in 1982 and was powered by two Pratt & Whitney JT9D-59A turbofan engines and had flown over 27,000 hours (over 16,500 take-off and landing cycles) at the time of the accident.

At 1:13 pm (local time), air traffic controllers in Medan cleared Flight 152 for an ILS approach to Runway 5 from its 316 degree heading.

[clarification needed] This led to the controller mistakenly saying "Merpati one five two turn left heading 240 to intercept runway zero five from the right side"; as the wrong call sign was used, the Garuda pilots disregarded these instructions.

[failed verification] The aircraft hit the ground at 1:32 p.m.,[4](p4) right wing low, turning towards the airport in the process at a heading of 230-240 degrees[4](p17) and an altitude of 1,550 feet (470 m) MSL.

[4](p4) The passengers were mostly Indonesian, eight Turkish with six Japanese, four German, three Taiwanese, two American, two British, two Canadian, two Ghanaian, one Australian, one Belgian, one Dutch, one French, one Italian, one Malaysian, one Pakistani, one South African and one Swedish national.

[4] Contributing to the accident was the failure of the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) for undetermined reasons and the inadequate vectoring charts used by the controllers at Medan.

Garuda Indonesia) was dismissed on the grounds that the US court had no jurisdiction to hear a case about domestic flights operated by a government-owned airline in another country.