A U.S. military plane with weather-piercing surveillance equipment joined the search Friday for a Ukrainian passenger jet lost in the fog-covered mountains of northern Greece.
The Navy P-3C Orion offered a powerful tool to cut through harsh weather that has frustrated the search since the chartered Yak-42 vanished Wednesday with 70 people aboard. The pilot was trying to land in the northern port of Salonica, also known as Thessaloniki.
The American aircraft, designed for submarine hunting, has highly sensitive cameras and radar capable of peering through the worst conditions. P-3 models are used by meteorologists to fly into the eyes of hurricanes.
Rescuers were losing hope of finding survivors, even as more than 3,500 soldiers trudged through deep snow.
The jet is believed to have crashed in the wilderness around Mt. Olympus, southwest of Salonica.
