South Pole parachuting tragedy remains a mystery
     SANTIAGO - December 8, 1997 9:11 p.m. EST - The adventure tour
 company that organized a 6-man parachuting trip to the South Pole
 that ended in tragedy said on Monday it still did not know what
 caused three of the parachutists to plunge to their deaths.
     "They checked their equipment, which was good according to them.
 Then they took off," Michael McDowell, president of the Canadian-
 based Adventure Network International (ANI), told Reuters by
 telephone from Germany.
     He said company officials had not yet been able to examine the
 equipment, but added he believed they were "perfectly normal, with
 a main chute and a safety chute."
     He named the three dead as Ray Miller, 43, of Ohio, Steve
 Mulholland, 36, of Seattle, Washington; and Hans Ruzec, 49, of
 Vienna, Austria.
     The six men jumped on Saturday at 3:00 p.m. EST (2000 GMT), but
 two chutes failed to open and one was only partially deployed.
     All were experienced jumpers, and the majority of them knew each
 other, McDowell said.
     Michael Kearns, 39, of Washington D.C., and Norwegians Trond
 Jacobsen, 32, and Morten Halvorsen, 37, survived.
     Kearns and the bodies of the three dead were flown on a plane
 chartered by ANI to Punta Arenas, a city at the southern tip of
 Chile, on Monday.
     "We have gotten reports back from the Norwegians and the people
 on the ground. We are talking to the American survivor. He will
 issue a statement today or tomorrow," he said.
     He said the Chilean authorities had taken control of the bodies
 for now. "We have no idea (what will happen to them), but of course
 they will be repatriated."
     The two Norwegians would stay at the South Pole until Friday to
 continue with their skiing, walking and climbing expedition, he said.
     The ANI-chartered plane departed from Patriot Hills, a base camp
 600 miles north of the South Pole, then landed at the pole so the
 men could check their packs before the jumped, which occurred from
 8,500 feet above ground level, McDowell said.
     He said some of the chutes carried timers or altitude-activated
 devices which automatically open the back-up chutes in the case of
 an emergency, but he was not sure who else besides Kearns was carry-
 ing such devices.
     In ANI's only other parachuting trip over the South Pole in 1992,
 a Norwegian successfully completed the jump, making it the world's
 first privately organized jump there, McDowell said.
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     BALTIMORE -- The National Transportation Safety Board will not
 recommend, at least for now, that older 747s like TWA Flight 800 be
 grounded, the agency's chairman said Monday ahead of a first-ever
 public hearing on the tragedy. On Sunday, the safety board reported
 that temperatures in TWA Flight 800's center fuel tank were well
 above explosive levels even before the 747 took off.
 ----------------------------------------------------
 18 Months and several thousands of pages of reports and still nothing
 definite as to real cause. Maybe the almost 30 million dollars spent
 should have been distributed to the victims heirs.  Jim
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