The crew, probably under the mistaken belief that the aircraft had suffered a double engine flameout, did not take the necessary actions to recover from the stall.

It specialized in flights to San Andrés in the Caribbean, parts of the Colombian mainland, and Central America.

A few months before the accident, the airline had been fined $46,000 for lack of pilot training and failure to log required flight data.

The flight was chartered by the Globe Trotters de Rivière Salée travel agency in Martinique.

The captain noticed the reduction in engine output, but he did not realize the source of the problem, so he started a rapid descent as a precaution.

At that time, the airspeed was already near stall speed, and the autopilot had already compensated with a nose-up attitude (angle of attack, or AOA) of 5.8° in an effort to maintain a constant altitude.

Although the cockpit voice recorder picked up the first officer correctly diagnosing the situation as a stall and attempting twice to communicate this to the captain, the captain was likely confused by the unusual behavior of the engines due to the anti-ice system and probably the airflow disruption caused by turbulence.

[13] In less than three minutes, the aircraft plunged from over 33,000 ft (10,000 m), reaching a maximum rate of descent of over 300 ft/s (90 m/s), crashing belly-first and exploding at 2:00:31 local time (07:00:31 UTC).

The French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA, French: Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile) was assigned the main responsibility for investigative analysis of the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), with the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) also taking part in recovery of FDR data.

The CIAA, which by then had been renamed the Civil Aviation Accident Investigation Board (JIAAC, Spanish: Junta Investigadora de Accidentes de Aviación Civil), released their final report into the accident and found the probable underlying causes of the crash to be the result of pilot error.

In addition, West Caribbean Airways came under criticism: West Caribbean failed to provide its pilots with the operation bulletin from Boeing, specifically addressing the autopilot issue; failed to emphasize CRM in ongoing pilot training; created stress for its pilots by not providing regular paychecks for a period of nearly six months leading up to the accident; and further created stress for the accident crew when the airplane was delayed and almost refused takeoff at their previous stop due to West Caribbean's non-payment of catering and food service fees.