Everything about the approach to Pointe-à-Pitre was wrong that evening. The airport sits in terrain surrounded by mountains, requiring a steep descent under the best conditions. On June 22, conditions were far from the best — a violent thunderstorm had settled over the area, dropping the cloud ceiling dangerously low. The VOR navigational beacon, the primary electronic aid for instrument approaches, was out of service. The crew was left relying on a non-directional beacon and their automatic direction finder, but thunderstorms are notorious for corrupting ADF readings. The electromagnetic interference from the storm bent the needle, and the aircraft strayed 15 kilometers west of its intended approach path. The crew reported their position over the NDB at 5,000 feet and turned east to begin their final descent, not knowing they were already well off course. They never saw the hill. This was Air France's second 707 crash in less than three weeks — another had gone down on June 3.

Among the 113 who died were people whose absence would reshape political and literary circles across the French-speaking world. Justin Catayée was a French Guianan politician and decorated war hero who had served France with distinction before turning to advocate for his homeland's future. Paul Niger was a poet and activist whose work gave voice to Black consciousness in the French Caribbean. Wanda Llosa, a first cousin of the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa — who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010 — also perished. The musician Gérard La Viny's father was among the dead; La Viny later wrote the song "Volé Boeing-la" as a tribute to the victims, a piece of Guadeloupean musical memory that still resonates. Each of the 113 passengers and crew had a life, a destination, people waiting. None arrived.

After the crash, a damning picture emerged about the crew's qualifications. Tex Johnston, Boeing's chief test pilot, wrote in his autobiography that Air France flight crews were "habitually late" for crew training and that aircraft were sometimes not properly serviced. Johnston described providing extensive additional flight training to the chief pilot of Flight 117, ultimately concluding that the captain had failed to qualify on the 707. He informed Air France's chief executive in writing that he did not believe the captain was capable of flying the aircraft. An Air France instructor later overrode Johnston's assessment and certified the pilot anyway. According to Johnston, this was only the captain's second trip in command of a 707 when he flew into Dos d'Âne. The official investigation could not determine a single definitive cause, pointing instead to a combination of factors: insufficient weather information provided to the crew, the failed VOR beacon, and the thunderstorm's corruption of the ADF signal. Air France pilots themselves publicly criticized the under-developed airports of the Caribbean, arguing that facilities like Guadeloupe's were dangerously ill-equipped for jet aircraft.

Debris from the crash still lies scattered in the forest on Dos d'Âne. In 2002, on the fortieth anniversary, a memorial stele was erected at the site bearing the names of all 113 victims. The commune and the regional government placed the official monument alongside earlier commemorative markers that had been put up shortly after the disaster. The road that leads to the crash site was named Route du Boeing — a name that has become simply part of the local geography, spoken without ceremony by residents who drive it daily. The crash of Flight 117 accelerated improvements to Caribbean aviation infrastructure, though the changes came too late for the people on that aircraft. Pointe-à-Pitre's airport was eventually modernized and expanded, its navigational aids upgraded to handle the demands of the jet age. The lesson of Dos d'Âne was clear but costly: new aircraft need airports capable of receiving them, and a thunderstorm over mountains leaves no margin for approximation.