The bodies of four people - including two teenage boys - were last night recovered from the wreckage of a light aircraft that crashed in a remote mountain region.

The Piper PA-28 single- engined plane was on its way from Gloucester to County Kildare in the Irish Republic when it went missing.

The pilot, Sharif Booz, was travelling with his wife, Margaret, his son and his son's friend when they dropped below radar.

Following a massive search operation, the wreckage of the aircraft was discovered in a remote region in the west of the county.

Jurgen Whyte, of the Irish Government's Air Accident Investigation Unit, said the bodies had to be dug out of the plane as its nose was embedded in the ground.

"The four bodies were dug out of the aircraft. They have been flown by helicopter to Naas Hospital," Mr Whyte said.

It is understood Mr Booz, a property developer from Almondsbury in Bristol, was an experienced pilot. Police said family members arrived in Ireland from the UK yesterday and post-mortem examinations will be carried out on the bodies at Naas General Hospital.

According to the operator of Kilrush airfield, Ian Valentine, Mr Booz used the landing strip usually twice a year to visit relatives in the nearby town of Newbridge.

While weather conditions over Ireland were unsettled, accident investigators refused to be drawn on whether that was the cause of the crash adding it was too early to tell.

Mr Valentine said he was not aware the plane was due to land at the strip until a relative of the pilot contacted him from Gloucester at around 6pm on Saturday.

When the alarm was raised, the Irish Aviation Authority checked over its radar log and discovered the plane's last-known location was over the Wicklow mountains at around 12.30pm.

A spokeswoman said air traffic control at Dublin Airport had monitored the plane up until about 10 minutes before this, when the pilot closed his flight plan.

While a preliminary search of the remote area was carried out on Saturday night, stormy conditions meant that it was not until first light yesterday that a major search got under way.

This involved police from the north Wicklow town of Bray, the defence forces, coastguard and mountain rescue personnel from Dublin, Wicklow, Tipperary and Northern Ireland.

By early yesterday morning the wreckage of the aircraft was found at Corriebracks, just south of Hollywood, in the west of the county.