Authorities in Papua New Guinea say there are no survivors among the 13 people on board a chartered plane that crashed on Tuesday.
Radio contact with the PNG Airlines flight from Port Moresby was lost 10 minutes before it was due to arrive in Kokoda on Tuesday.
The plane was flying in bad weather and went missing in a thickly forested mountain region. It went down just north of the village of Isurava, near Kokoda.
The dead included nine Australians who were going to walk the Kokoda Track.
PNG's Transport Minister Don Polye said the bodies would be recovered from the site, taken to Kokoda then to Port Moresby and finally Australia.
Mr Polye would not speculate on what went wrong for the Airlines PNG Twin Otter that went missing on Tuesday and was discovered crashed early on Wednesday morning.
"I have an ordered an investigation into Airlines PNG and that will be carried out by the department," he said.
Mr Polye would not comment on PNG authorities failing to properly investigate 19 air crashes which have killed 16 people, including three Australians and three New Zealanders since 2000.
