On August 6, 1997, the Boeing 747-300 operating the flight crashed on Bijia Peak, south of Nimitz Hill, in Asan-Maina, Guam, while on approach to the destination airport, killing 229[a] of the 254 people aboard,[3] making it the deadliest aviation accident to occur in American dependent territory, and the fourth-deadliest aviation accident on American soil overall, excluding terrorism.

It was raining heavily in Guam, so visibility was considerably reduced, and the crew attempted an instrument landing.

The first officer and flight engineer noticed that the aircraft was descending very steeply, and remarked several times that the airport "is not in sight."

Despite protests from flight engineer Nam that the detected signal was not the glide-slope indicator, Park continued the approach,[9] and at 1:42 am, the aircraft crashed into Bijia Peak just short of the NIMITZ VOR navigation beacon about 3 nmi (3.5 mi; 5.6 km) short of the runway, at an altitude of 660 ft (200 m).

One survivor, 36-year-old Hyun Seong Hong (홍현성, also spelled Hong Hyun Sung) of the United States, occupied seat 3B in first class, and said that the crash occurred so quickly that the passengers "had no time to scream"[10] and likened the crash to "a scene from a film.

United States Navy Seabees of NMCB-133 and NMCB-40 were some of the first on the scene and used their earth-moving equipment to clear roadways and timber from the crash-site approach.

The Seabees used backhoes to crack open the still-burning plane to rescue survivors and erected mortuary tents for first responders.

The hull had disintegrated, and jet fuel in the wing tanks had sparked a fire that was still burning eight hours after impact.

[2]: 9, 45–48 Governor Carl Gutierrez found 11-year-old Rika Matsuda, from Japan, who had boarded the flight with her mother, 44-year-old Shigeko.

After escaping from the aircraft, Rika discovered a surviving flight attendant, Lee Yong Ho (이용호).

According to the cockpit voice recorder, the flight crew suggested to the captain that he had made a mistake, but did not explicitly warn him.

The center/approach controller, 39-year-old Kurt James Mayo, did not adhere to standard ATC procedures and failed to monitor the aircraft during its descent.

[20][21][22] The section of the report entitled "Probable Cause" concluded: The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the captain's failure to adequately brief and execute the non-precision approach and the first officer's and flight engineer's failure to effectively monitor and cross-check the captain's execution of the approach.

Contributing to these failures were the captain's fatigue and Korean Air's inadequate flight crew training.

[2]: xi, 175 The investigation report stated that a contributing factor was that the ATC Minimum Safe Altitude Warning (MSAW) system at Antonio B.

Won Pat International Airport had been deliberately modified to limit spurious alarms and could not detect an approaching aircraft that was below minimum safe altitude.

[2]: 11, 23, 45, 57 Shin Ki-ha, a four-term South Korean parliamentarian and former leader of the National Congress for New Politics, traveled with his wife and around 20 party members.

[32] On August 13, 1997, 50 protesters staged a sit-in at Guam Airport, saying that the recovery of the dead was taking too long; they sat on blankets and sheets of paper at the Korean Air counter.

[36] New Zealander Barry Small, a helicopter pilot and a survivor of the accident, lobbied for safer storage of duty-free alcohol and redesigns of crossbars on airline seats; he said that the storage of duty-free alcohol on Flight 801 contributed to the spreading of the fire and the crossbars injured passengers so that they could not escape from the aircraft.