Finders of Plane Part Reap Reward

A farm family whose cornfield yielded a key piece of wreckage from United Airlines Flight 232 that crashed in Sioux City in July collected a $116,000 reward Thursday.

Janice Sorenson of rural Alta ran over a titanium fan blade disk while combining corn on Tuesday. The piece came from a General Electric tail engine on the United DC-10 that crashed July 19, killing 112 of the 296 people aboard.

The disk is considered the most essential piece of evidence to finding out why the plane’s No. 2 engine disintegrated in flight. General Electric offered $50,000 for return of the disk alone and a total of $271,000 in rewards for other missing engine parts such as bolts and fan blades. The disk pulled from the Sorenson’s farm field contained many other parts sought by investigators.

GE field representative Jerry Clark presented a check for $116,000 to the Sorensons on Thursday and said another check for $3,000 will be coming later.

“We’ll give some to charity, although I don’t know about our church,” Janice Sorenson said. “My grandfather said he saw two churches ruined after they received a lot of money.”