[1]: 1 [4] At the time of the accident, the Southern Airways aircraft was flying from Huntsville-Madison County Jetport to Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport.

[1]: 50  The crew was advised of the presence of embedded thunderstorms and possible tornadoes along their general route prior to their departure from Huntsville, but they were not subsequently told that the cells had since formed a squall line.

The peak convective activity was later shown on ground radar to be near Rome, Georgia, to which the flight was cleared to proceed by air traffic control.

As the aircraft descended from its cruising altitude of 17,000 to 14,000 feet (5,200 to 4,300 m) near Rome VOR, it apparently entered a thunderstorm cell and encountered a massive amount of rain and hail.

[5][2] The crew attempted unsuccessfully to restart the engines, gliding down unpowered, while simultaneously trying to find an emergency landing field within range.

As the aircraft ran out of altitude and options, gliding with a broken windshield and no engine power, the crew made visual contact with the ground and spotted a straight section of a rural highway below.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigated the accident and concluded the following probable cause in its final report:[1]: 41 The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the total and unique loss of thrust from both engines while the aircraft was penetrating an area of severe thunderstorms.

Flight attendant Catherine Cooper survived unscathed because she was sitting in an area that provided her with relative protection from impact forces.

She found herself hanging upside-down while still strapped into her seat, unbuckled the seatbelt, and jumped from an opening in the fuselage when the main cabin door turned out to be jammed and inoperable.

Meanwhile, flight attendant Sandy Ward was seated in the back of the plane and reported it "bouncing up and down" several times during impact and that fire spread through the cabin.

[6] This resulted in a number of people sustaining lacerations and bruises to their feet that would have been unlikely to have occurred otherwise, but since the attendants did not know the exact circumstances of the crash, they simply followed by-the-book emergency directions.

The NTSB believed that the pilots should have informed the flight attendants and crew to cushion themselves with blankets, coats, and pillows, and not remove their shoes.

The best chance for a (reasonably) safe landing would have been at Dobbins Air Force Base in Marietta, Georgia,[1]: 33  but why the crew did not attempt it is unclear because of the two-minute gap in CVR data.

The NTSB also included these contributing factors:the failure of the company's dispatching system to provide the flight crew with up-to-date severe weather information pertaining to the aircraft's intended route of flight, the captain's reliance on airborne weather radar for penetration of thunderstorm areas, and limitations in the Federal Aviation Administration's air traffic control system, which precluded the timely dissemination of real-time hazardous weather information to the flight crew.Moreover, the crew had no training for a situation that involved total loss of engine thrust, nor did Southern Airways require such training.

Kay Bailey, who signed the final report, added a concurring statement, which reiterated the board's previous recommendations for improved real-time weather dissemination.

The NTSB concluded:The flight attendants acted commendably for initiating a comprehensive emergency briefing of the passengers for their protection in preparation for a crash landing.

[19] The Discovery Channel Canada / National Geographic TV series Mayday depicted the accident in a 2007 episode titled "Southern Storm".