The flight was carried out with a Bombardier CRJ100ER, which was chartered by the United Nations for its missions in Congo following the outbreak of conflicts in the area.

There were 4 crew members on board, consisted of Captain Alexei Hovhanesyan, First Officer Suliko Tsutskiridze, a flight attendant and a ground engineer.

!Tsutkiridze was shocked to see the size of the storm, even could be heard once when he said that the entire ground surface was covered by "magenta".

During their conversation on the possible attempts to avoid the weather, personnel in Kinshasa asked the crew to report back on their position.

The controller then cleared Flight 834 to conduct a straight-in approach to the localizer of Runway 24 of Kinshasa's N'djili Airport.

Following their request, the controller in Kinshasa stated that the airport was being pounded with thunderstorm activity with winds at 8 knots (15 km/h; 9.2 mph).

The wind shear warning blared inside the cockpit and the nose started to pitch downwards at an angle of 7 degree in a matter of seconds.

[15] Officials confirmed that the passengers were from 14 nationalities, including Congolese,[15] South Africans,[16] Bangladeshi,[17] Belgians,[18] Ivorians,[19] Malians,[19][20] Ghanaian, Beninese,[15] Burkinabe,[21] Haitian,[22] Kenyan,[23] Mauritanian,[15] Santomean[15] and Senegalese.

[31][32] UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also issued a letter containing his sorrow of the crash and the other recent deadly incidents involving UN staff in Afghanistan, Ivory Coast and Haiti.

[10] The Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Alain Le Roy indicated that the poor weather was a key element in the cause of the crash.

This was also confirmed by the cockpit recording in which First Officer Tsutkiridze expressed his shock in response to the large coverage of the weather system.

Despite this, the ATC had warned the crew on the prevailing weather condition in the airport with "Thunderstorm over the station", though the observance of squall line was not reported.

The deteriorating visibility prompted the crew to execute a go-around but the squall line then produced microbursts with vertical gusts of up to 40–50 feet per second (12–15 m/s).

In respect to the appropriate procedure, the presence of severe weather in the area around Kinshasa should have prevented the crew from attempting a landing at the airport.

Their intention to land later became firmer as First Officer Tsutkiridze successfully obtained visual contact with the runway, which was on the right side of the aircraft.

The first officer then tried to convince the captain by pointing the direction of the runway and adding that "there was nothing there" (no significant weather phenomenon compared to the other area) and thus it was safer for them to fly there.

According to the investigation, the crew might have had faced a "situation overload", which eventually decreased their ability to make decision correctly.

While Georgian Airways had adopted Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) program, the airline had not followed said policy for the CRJ100 fleet.

The nose attitude was not in a sufficient upwards position for a recovery as it was only put at 8 degree and the aircraft's landing gear was not retracted.

Due to the low altitude of the aircraft, according to investigators the crew would've needed a much more higher setting of the thrust lever (at fully forward position) and the landing gear should've been retracted for better aerodynamics.

The investigation noted that Captain Hovhanesyan, who was the pilot flying, had undergone a simulator training only once for his upgrade to the CRJ100, which was deemed as inadequate.

[5] By pressing the TOGA button, a command bar for the 10 degree reference indication would have appeared on the aircraft's flight director and pilots would've been able to notice it.

Georgian CAA, however, insisted that such syllabus was actually in conformance with ICAO standards and as such stated that it could not be included as one of the contributing factors to the crash.

During the accident flight, the weather rapidly deteriorated in mere minutes but the ATC personnel kept relaying the term NOSIG to the crew.

[5] An investigation from the Permanent Office of Investigations of Aviation Accidents/Incidents of the DRC Ministry of Transport and Channels of Communication listed the probable cause of the accident as follow: The most probable cause of the accident was Flight 834's encounter with a severe microburst-like weather phenomenon at a very low altitude during the process of go-around.

The severe vertical gust/downdraft caused a significant and sudden pitch change to the aircraft which resulted in a considerable loss of height.

The DRC Civil Aviation Administration was ordered to immediately implement effective oversight on all airliners in the country and Georgian Airways was asked to revise their training program.

The CAA, however, stated that such statement was misleading as it didn't fully reflect the analysis of the crew's action during the flight.

As inclement weather condition was prevailing in Kinshasa at the time, the flight operation manual actually recommended the crew to maintain higher airspeed than normal.

The Congolese investigation team, however, assumed that higher thrust setting would have improved the pilots' chances of avoiding the accident.