OTTAWA: Five people died in the crash of a single-engine plane en route from Edmonton to Winnipeg in western Canada, search and rescue officials said Friday.

"There were no survivors," Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Constable Steve Conlon told AFP.

Earlier, Coast Guard maritime coordinator Robert Bradbury at CFB Trenton, which led search and rescue efforts, said there were five people onboard the aircraft when it disappeared from radar shortly after takeoff.

"We had a report of an aircraft disappearing off radar northeast of Wainwright (Alberta) at about 9 a.m. local time (1500 GMT)," he said.

A Griffon helicopter from CFB Cold Lake Alberta and a Hercules aircraft from 435 Squadron in Winnipeg, as well as the RCMP were dispatched to try to find the PA-46 Piper aircraft, officials said. But they found only debris.

"We have located the crash site and the RCMP are on site now investigating," Bradbury said.

A spokeswoman for A.D. Williams Engineering, which owns the plane, told local media its senior staff were aboard the aircraft travelling to Winnipeg for business meetings at the time of the accident.

The same company lost its chief executive in a very similar plane crash exactly five months earlier. His young granddaughter miraculously survived that accident. - AFP/ac