On 8 January 2003 at 20:19 EET (18:19 UTC), the aircraft operating the flight, a British Aerospace Avro RJ100, struck the ground on final approach approximately 900 metres (3,000 ft) short of the runway threshold during inclement weather conditions.

Owned by Trident Jet (Dublin) Limited, it was equipped with four Lycoming LF507-1F turbofan engines and was delivered to the airline in March 1994.

First Officer Ismail Altug Ulusu, aged 33, had joined Turkish Airlines in 1998 and had since clocked 2,052 flight hours in total.

[2][8] Nonetheless, violating standard procedures, the captain decided to continue the approach to as close as 1 mile (1.6 km) to the runway and descended further to 500 feet (150 m) and beyond, well below the MDA.

At 1 mile (1.6 km) off the threshold of the runway and at an altitude of 200 feet (60 m) (which in this case constituted the decision height), the ground proximity warning system (GPWS) started to trigger aural alarms.

Eight seconds later, the crew decided to abort the landing and initiated a go-around, but before being able to execute the command, the airplane struck the ground with the undersurface of the fuselage and the landing gear at 20:19 EET (18:19 UTC), 900 metres (3,000 ft) off the threshold of runway 34 and 30 metres (100 ft) off the approach lights at a speed of around 131 knots (243 km/h; 151 mph).

Eventually, it hit a slope, broke up into three major pieces, exploded and caught fire; most of the bodies and parts of the wreckage were burnt.

This clearly contradicts the weather report the air traffic controller at Diyarbakır Airport had relayed to the crew minutes before the crash.

The investigation was completed around two years later in April 2005 and concluded that:[2] The Turkish Airline Pilots Association stated that an instrument landing system might have prevented the accident.