Navy Searches For Russian Airliner

Navy ships with sophisticated equipment scanned the waters of the Pacific Ocean into the early hours today as the search for a missing Russian airliner shifted from land to sea.

No trace has been found of the Tupolev-154 that disappeared from radar screens early Thursday with 97 people on board and is presumed to have crashed.

The plane - which belonged to Khabarovsk Airlines, a regional offshoot of Aeroflot - lost radio contact shortly after it took off from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Sakhalin Island.

Russia’s Independent Television reported Friday night that the passenger plane was carrying 5 tons of caviar. A report by a Russian aviation committee last year said planes often are overloaded to make extra money.