Lauda Inspects Wreckage of Thai Air Crash

An Austrian plane that crashed in Thailand, killing 223 people, disintegrated in the air and rained down in millions of little pieces, airline owner Niki Lauda said Tuesday after inspecting the wreckage.

“I have never seen in my life anything like this,” said Lauda, owner of 51% of the Austrian airline bearing his name. “The only thing I learned today is that the airplane disintegrated in the air. I don’t know the cause of it.”

Lauda Air’s Boeing 767-300 was heading for Vienna after leaving Bangkok late Sunday when it exploded in the air. All 223 people aboard, including a United Nations anti-drug official, were killed.

Lauda joined investigators and experts from the Thai Aviation Department, the Austrian Ministry of Transport, the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority and Boeing on a helicopter tour of the crash site.

Lauda, a former world champion race car driver, also wandered amid the wreckage in shirt-sleeves and a baseball cap.

Speculation about the cause of the crash centers on the possibility that a bomb was planted on the plane. Before visiting the site, 120 miles northwest of Bangkok, Lauda had dismissed reports of a bombing as “pure speculation.”

The presence on board of Donald McIntosh, a British U.N. adviser on drug control, sparked speculation in British newspapers that the plane could have been bombed on orders of drug barons operating in the “Golden Triangle” of Thailand, Laos and Burma.

Lauda also denied the airline had been concerned about any fired employees. U.S. news reports have quoted Western airline officials in Bangkok as saying a former employee had threatened to bomb the airlines’ offices and planes.

Searchers Tuesday found part of the cockpit containing at least three of the 10 crew members. The pilot, Thomas Welch, one of three Americans on the plane, was still strapped to his seat.