Engine Part, Key Clue to DC-10 Crash, Found

A farmer harvesting corn has found the engine part believed to hold the key to finding the cause of a United Airlines jet crash that killed 112 people in July.

“It will fill in the answers, as far as what precipitated the engine failure,” said Jerry Clark, an investigator for General Electric Co., maker of the engine that disintegrated and severed the jumbo jet’s hydraulic controls.

Janice Sorenson said she was driving a combine Tuesday when she struck what turned out to be most of the engine rotor fan disk, a part so highly prized that GE had offered a $50,000 reward for it.

Workers today loaded the metal onto an airplane bound for a GE plant in Cincinnati for inspection.

Clark said GE will comb the fields over the weekend for the rest of the disk and its connecting hardware. Only four of 20 bolts that held it to the engine have been found, he said.

But Clark he said he was confident that the large piece--which represents about two-thirds of the 300-pound titanium disk--will allow investigators to pinpoint the cause of the engine failure.

“I felt a resistance against the combine, so I backed up, and I looked and I could see the fan blades protruding from the ground,” Sorenson said today.

Sorenson said she knew immediately what the piece was because GE had distributed pictures of it to farmers.

“I was shocked and I was very happy for GE because they put a lot of time in it,” she said. “Hopefully it will solve some of the problems they’ve been looking for.”

United Flight 232 crashed July 19 about 50 miles away at Sioux City. A total of 184 people survived.

Investigators have speculated that a separated fan disk caused the rear engine to disintegrate, throwing shrapnel that severed the hydraulics and made the plane virtually impossible to control. The crew managed to turn the jet around and reach Sioux City.

“There is no doubt about it, this is an extremely important find,” National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz said in Washington. “Through meticulous metallurgy, we hope to determine if that was the point of failure in the fan section.”

Clark urged others to keep searching for other engine parts. “A lot of important parts are still missing and are out there somewhere,” he said. “We’re still looking for the other side of the separated piece.”

Of the $271,000 in reward money offered, more than half is still available, Clark said.

Clark said Sorenson may receive more than $50,000 because some of the blades, for which the company is paying separate rewards, were still attached, said GE lawyer Stephen Gadd.