FOUR men were killed when their light aircraft crashed into the Paps

of Jura mountain range.

Wreckage of the single-engine TB20 aircraft, which left Blackpool on

Saturday morning, was discovered last night. The bodies were found by a

team from Jura coastguard. No-one realised the aircraft was missing

until a hotelier telephoned the home of one of the passengers.

A spokesman for the Rescue Co-ordination Centre at RAF Pitreavie said:

''Wreckage was scattered over a wide area on the top of Glas Bheinn. It

looks as if the plane flew right over the centre of Jura en route for

Mull and smacked into the top of the hill.''

There were high winds and torrential rain at the time.

One of the men is believed to be Mr Ian Shaw, a fishmonger, from

Waddington, Clitheroe, who was travelling to Mull with three friends for

a holiday. He was in his early 50s, married, and had two children.

The pilot and owner of the aircraft is believed to be Mr R. C. Watts,

of Knowle Green, in Preston. The names of the other two passengers, both

believed to be from Clitheroe, have not been released.

The search was not launched until 30 hours after the aircraft went

missing. The alert was raised after a Mull hotelier telephoned the home

of one of the passengers to ask whether he should keep the room vacant.

Mr Paul Price, owner of the Glenforsa Hotel, said: ''The aircraft left

Squires Gate in Blackpool at 11.39 yesterday morning and they should

have arrived here at 2pm.''

Mr Price, also from the East Lancashire area, had known Mr Shaw since

his schooldays.

He added: ''I tried to phone the wife of a personal friend who was a

passenger on the aircraft last night, mainly to see if they were coming,

and to release their rooms if they weren't. I didn't get any reply.

''When I got round to phoning today, I was going to give him a

rollocking for not cancelling. But his wife told me he had left on the

plane. None of their wives had heard from them. I think they were

expecting their husbands to phone. My friend's wife was out for the

evening last night.''

Once the alarm was raised, an RAF Nimrod carried out a search of the

flight course the missing aircraft was expected to have taken. Checks

were made at airfields to discover whether the pilot had made a

diversion because of bad weather.

Members of RAF Kinloss mountain rescue team, who had been on a

training exercise on Skye, were last night at the site of the crash. An

accident investigation team is due to arrive today.

The search involved a Nimrod from RAF Kinloss, two RAF Sea King

helicopters, coastguard auxiliaries from Jura, Colonsay, Islay, and

Gigha, and the mountain rescue team.