In 1989, an Iowa farmer hit a hidden jet-engine part while harvesting corn; the discovery helped investigators probe a fatal crash and brought her a $116,000 reward

In October 1989, Iowa farmer Janice Sorenson discovered a titanium fan disk from the engine of United Airlines Flight 232. The discovery brought her and her husband, Dale Sorenson, a $116,000 reward from the General Electric Company, which had offered money for missing engine components following the aircraft's fatal crash in Sioux City, Iowa, on 19 July 1989.According to The New York Times, the disk was an integral part of the evidence because investigators had suspected the aircraft’s engine failure severed its hydraulic control lines. The breakthrough for Sorensons came after months of searching led by farmers and investigators surrounding the countryside for missing engine parts. General Electric had offered a total of $271,000 for the return of missing engine components, including the long-sought fan disk itself. While working on her family’s working farm, about 10 miles north of Alta, Janice struck the component with her harvesting combine.The discovery on the Sorensons' farmJanice recognised the object after her combine struck it because General Electric had circulated photographs of the missing component. She got off the machine and stopped harvesting to check whether the object was part of the crashed DC-10, which killed 111 of the 296 people aboard. After the details were verified, she contacted Jerry Clark, a General Electric safety investigator who had worked with authorities on the search.Recalling the experience to The New York Times, Janice described her immediate response: “I think I was in shock.” She recalled the moment as an emotional and tear-ridden experience that made her think of all the people who had died rather than the financial reward. The disk, however, was not the only portion recovered from the farmland near Alta; Sorenson’s neighbour, Harold Halverson, had found the remainder of the component approximately half a mile away in his cornfield.For investigators, the recovery of the disk concluded a long wait for an important component which they had long sought to examine to determine how the aircraft's engine had disintegrated in flight. The engine failure of the DC-10 had rendered the pilots without the hydraulic systems needed to control the aircraft normally and contributed to the circumstances surrounding the crash landing.Under General Electric’s reward programme, several missing parts were covered, and for the disk alone the reward stood at $50,000, as per a Los Angeles Times report from 13 October 1989. The reason that Sorensons received a larger payment was that the recovered disk was thought key to the crash.The engine evidence and the family's plansThe examination of the disk led to a finding that would shed light on a possible mechanical cause of the engine failure. On 23 October 1989, TIME reported that a crack was found by metallurgists who inspected the component, and it seemed to have been there since the start. The existence of this crack before the explosion might have triggered the plane crash; however, this was a preliminary investigative finding and not a definitive conclusion.The couple had recently sold a service station investment that had failed to produce a profit. Before completing the sale, they had been required to excavate and dispose of contaminated soil around old petroleum storage tanks, with the resulting expenses consuming the prospect of a financial return.For the Sorensons, the reward’s timing couldn't have been more auspicious as it came during a time of financial difficulty when the couple had sold off a service station investment that didn’t yield any profit. Before the sale was completed, they had disposed of and excavated the contaminated soil around old petroleum storage tanks, and the resulting expenses consumed the prospect of a financial return.Janice and Dale had married at 19 and 21 and returned to her parents' farm after Dale's Army service during the Korean War. By 1989, they were still living in the farmhouse where Janice and her father had been born. Their agricultural work included growing corn and soybeans, raising cattle and producing turkeys, while Dale had also undertaken work away from the farm.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.