HILO, Hawai'i — A Big Island Fire Department helicopter finally solved the mystery of a missing tour plane early this morning when it discovered the plane wreckage and three bodies in a thick hapu'u forest high on the southeastern slope of Mauna Loa volcano.

There were no survivors, said Fire Chief Darryl Oliveira.

Crews have been searching since early afternoon on Tuesday for a Cessna 172 piloted by Katsuhiro Takahashi, 40, and carrying two passengers, Japanese tourists Nobuhiro and Masako Suzuki, 53 and 56.

The Island Hoppers tour flight failed to return from what was supposed to be a three-hour circle-island tour flight around the Big Island.

Oliveira said the plane was found at 5:53 a.m. in about five pieces in a small crash site at the 5,200-foot elevation in a remote area of the Ka'u Forest Reserve. He said one of the bodies had to be extricated from the wreckage.

The crash was about eight and a half miles northwest of Punalu'u Beach and about eight and a half miles west of Pahala.

There are no roads in the area, and the crash site is not accessible from the ground, Oliveira said. County fire helicopters had to be used to remove the bodies and deliver an investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board to the site at about 8 a.m.

Suzuki family members were briefed at Hawaii County Civil Defense headquarters this afternoon, but declined to speak with reporters.

Toshihiko Yamada, cousin of Nobuhiro Suzuki, issued a statement through a county spokeswoman thanking county rescue workers for their efforts.

"We are very grateful to the Hawai'i County authorities for having done such a thorough job of looking for the family members over the past five days, even hiking up the mountain on foot from early in the morning," he said in the statement.

County spokeswoman Janet Snyder said: "After all this time has passed, they didn't really expect to ever learn the whereabouts of family members, and they're very grateful to know at least what happened to them."

A second briefing was planned for pilot Takahashi's family, Snyder said.

Oliveira said the area where the wreckage was found had been searched previously by U.S. Coast Guard crews. County crews wanted to check again, partly part because of a report by campers who were about two miles from the crash site on Tuesday.

The campers reported hearing a plane passing, and then the noise from the engine abruptly halted, Oliveira said.

Oliveira said there was some broken vegetation where the plane struck, but not a great deal, suggesting the plane may have come down at a steep angle.

While the search was under way, poor visibility on the upper slopes of Mauna Loa, with clouds closing in on the area almost every morning, hampered the effort.

"Weather was probably a factor in not seeing it before as well as the vegetation was pretty thick," with a 30-foot canopy towering over a forest of large hapu'u ferns, Oliveira said.

Arrangements were being made to move the bodies to Hilo Medical Center.

The crash site is so inaccessible that no family members were taken there or to the county command post on an old cane haul road about four miles from the crash site, Oliveira said.

A staging area for the aircraft was also set up in a high meadow about a mile from the crash site to accommodate rescue crews, but Oliveira said the crash debris will not be removed until the NTSB has completed its investigation.

He said families of the pilot and passengers would be briefed privately at county Civil Defense headquarters in Hilo.