TWO people are feared dead after the wreckage of a light aircraft was found following a huge search when it failed to land at an aiport.

The plane, which had two people on board, crashed into a hillside near a Perthshire village yesterday (sun). It had lost contact with air traffic controllers on the approach to Dundee Airport.

It is the second fatal crash involving a small plane from the airport in a month.

David Rous and his wife Margaret Ann were killed when their PA28 Piper Cherokee enroute from Dundee to the isle of Tiree crashed into a hill on Easter Saturday.

Yesterday Police, Coastguard, RNLI lifeboats and the RAF scrambled into action as a joint operation got under way immediately after the plane lost contact. Local villagers near the crash site described the weather conditions as 'terrible' with torrential rain and high winds.

Wreckage was later spotted in the hills close to Abernyte, near Forehill Wood, six miles west of the airport.

The condition of the two occupants of the plane was unknown.

Police commandeered the car park at the nearby Scottish Antiques and Arts Centre to establish a base for their operations, with a police command unit, Coastguard and a mountain rescue team preparing operations there.

The site of the crash itself was around two miles away, on a rural single track road between Abernyte and Kinnaird.

Uniformed police officers stood guard at the end of a farm track preventing entry to the area where the plane is understood to have come down.

Inspector Marc Lorente, the incident officer, said at the scene that wreckage had been found following a multi-agency probe.

He said: "Wreckage of a light aircraft has been found.

"The terrain is quite bad - as are the weather conditions.

"It is misty and the area is inaccessible.

"We started at the river and the parameters later focused up to here when the various agencies looked at their systems.

"Light aircraft are completely different to commercial aircraft - they're not tracked in the same way.

"It is a massive operation and we will be here for a considerable time."

A spokesman for Aberdeen Coastguard said they received a call about a "possible aircraft crash" at 12.43pm."