New Jersey parachutist lands in tree
     RAMSEY, N.J.- Feb 16, 1998 2:24 p.m. EST - Firefighters rescued
 a New Jersey man Monday who set off in a motorized parachute but
 crash-landed in the top of a nearby tree. Carl Quimby was uninjured
 -- but highly embarrassed -- when he got his parachute tangled in
 the tree top.
     Quimby, 26, who works in an area pizza shop, dangled from the
 branches for a half hour before members of the local fire department
 helped him down a 75-foot ladder.
     "The most embarrassing thing about the whole incident was that I
 knew most of the firefighters who were trying to get me down," he
 said. "They kidded me a lot about my predicament."
    Quimby had taken off in his $10,000, purple and yellow parachute,
 propelled by a small gasoline motor, from a school athletic field
 for a short, early-morning ride.
     He simply failed to clear the tree top, he explained later from
 his home in nearby Paramus.
     Despite his mishap, Quimby said it would not be his last venture
 into the skies.
     "It was just one of those things," he said. "Next time, I'll fly
 a little higher."
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             Detroit's airport ranks last, Tampa's first
     ROMULUS, Mich. -- Feb 16, 1998 2:48 p.m. EST -- Detroit Metro-
 politan Airport ranks last and Tampa, Fla.'s airport is best among
 the nation's 36 top airports, according to a survey of passengers.
     In four of eight categories -- speed of baggage delivery, ease
 of reaching gates, available ground transportation and ease of fol-
 lowing signs -- Metro Airport earned the lowest scores of any air-
 port in the survey of about 90,000 passengers.
     In the remaining categories -- cleanliness, quality of restau-
 rants, attractiveness, and closeness of parking -- the 68-year-old
 airport rated near the bottom.
     The private survey by Los Angeles-based Plog Research Inc. was
 commissioned by the 36 big airports. Passengers were surveyed in the
 first six months of last year and the study was completed late last
 year, but airport officials refused to release the findings. It was
 obtained last week by The Detroit News, which published a story
 Monday.
     Airport and airline officials acknowledge there are problems at
 Detroit, but say most of them cited in the survey have been fixed.
     "It's not the Ritz-Carlton of airports, but we're trying to make
 Metro work," Northwest Airlines spokesman Jim Faulkner said.  The
 airline has 70 percent of the airport's traffic.
     The results came as no surprise to some passengers.
    "It's just too far to walk between flights," said John Sebastian,
 a Grand Rapids businessman who regularly uses Metro Airport. "At 5
 o'clock, this place is a mob scene."
     Others disagreed.
     "Metro's not bad for the amount of travel it gets," said Dean
 VanNatter, a Lansing business consultant and frequent traveler. "It's
 nothing like Atlanta, but it's not bad."
     From best to worse, here's how the airports were ranked:
 1. Tampa, Fla.        2. Pittsburgh       3. Charlotte, N.C.
 4. Nashville, Tenn.   5. Denver           6. Phoenix
 7. Las Vegas          8. Salt Lake City   9. Atlanta
 10. Baltimore         11. Honolulu        12. Seattle
 13. Kansas City       14. Minneapolis-St. Paul
 15. Oakland, Calif.   16. Memphis, Tenn.  17. Houston
 18. Raleigh-Durham, N.C.                  19. Windsor Locks, Conn.
 20. Chicago, O'Hare   21. San Francisco   22. Sacramento, Calif.
 23. St. Louis         24. Washington, D.C., Dulles
 25. Dallas-Fort Worth 26. Newark, N.J.    27. Miami
 28. Portland, Ore.    29. Los Angeles     30. Philadelphia
 31. New York City, LaGuardia              32. Chicago, Midway
 33. Washington, D.C., Washington National 34. Boston, Logan
 35. New York City, John F. Kennedy        36. Detroit.
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