On 24 August 1998, during its descent to Tachileik the flight went missing over a hill approximately two miles (3.2 km) from the airport.

Workers from Bangkok International Airport also stated that there were no signs that the aircraft had entered Thai airspace and no emergency calls were received by the operators.

Later that day, Myanmar officials announced that they had been informed by the Laotian government that the aircraft had crashed in northern Laos, with no details provided on the fate of the passengers and crews.

The wreckage was found by search party at 02:00 a.m local time, in a mountainous and densely forested area.

[2] A news report from Bangkok Post stated that several people had actually survived the crash, but were eventually killed by local villagers.

The paper quoted unnamed officials and witnesses from the crash site, stating that an air stewardess and a female university student were gang-raped, while the male survivors, who were military personnel, were tortured and killed by the ethnic Shan villagers.