The aircraft crashed into the Mediterranean Sea, 7 km (4.3 mi; 3.8 nmi) off Canet-en-Roussillon on the French coast, close to the Spanish border, killing all seven people on board.

The subsequent investigation attributed the accident to incorrect maintenance procedures that allowed water to enter and freeze in the angle-of-attack sensors during flight, rendering them inoperative, combined with the crew's attempt to perform a test at a dangerously low altitude.

At 15:33 UTC on the flight back to Perpignan, the crew requested clearance to 39,000 feet to test the auxiliary power unit (APU).

The crew of Flight 888 proceeded to test the auxiliary power unit, bank angle protections and the overspeed warning among other things at 39,000 feet.

Not eager to test the stall protection while passing through a layer of cloud, the German captain said, "I think we will have to do the slow flight probably later", to which his New Zealand counterpart replied, "okay yeah".

With barely 3,000 feet between them and the ocean, following instructions of the New Zealand pilot sitting in the jump seat, Captain Norbert Käppel moved the throttles to idle and raised the nose of the aircraft by pulling back on his side-stick, dramatically slowing the speed of the aircraft.

As the speed of the aircraft dropped to a critical point in which it could no longer maintain flight, a stall alarm sounded in the cockpit.

In normal law, moving the side-stick prompts the computer to adjust the horizontal stabilizer to control the pitch.

Now, in direct law, with no such assistance from the computer, the pilots needed to use both the side-stick and the manual trim wheel to lower the nose of the aircraft.

Reaching 57 degrees nose up, while in a hard bank to the left, their altitude peaked at just below 4,000 feet and the airspeed dropped to just 40 knots, far too low to fly.

Shuddering violently, the aircraft crashed into the Mediterranean Sea, 7 km (4.3 mi; 3.8 nmi) off the coast of Étang de Canet-Saint-Nazaire near Canet-en-Roussillon.

[10] The crash area was declared a crime scene and the French justice system opened a manslaughter investigation.

As specified in the Structure Repair Manual by Airbus, fitting a protection device on AOA sensors before these tasks is mandatory.

The primary cause of the accident was that the crew attempted an improvised test of the AOA warning system, not knowing that it was not functioning properly due to the inoperative sensors.

In addition, the pilots also failed to recover from an aerodynamic stall in a manual mode in which the stabilizer had to be set to an up position to trim the aircraft.

To improve requirements for planning and procedures of non-revenue flights, to close a loophole pertaining to equipment qualification discovered during the investigation (but which did not impact the events as transpired), to undertake a safety study of certification standards for flight control reconfiguration warning systems, and to re-evaluate recommended approach-to-stall techniques and training for all types of modern airplanes.

[8] The story of the accident was featured on the 13th season of Canadian television show Mayday, an episode entitled "Imperfect Pitch".