Plane with 6 aboard missing off northeast Brazil

(CNN) -- A small plane carrying four British businessmen and two Brazilian pilots has disappeared off the northeastern Brazil coast, officials said.

The two-engine Cessna 310 left at 5 p.m. Friday (4 p.m. ET) in Salvador, the capital of Brazil's Bahia state, and was due to arrive an hour later in the seaport town of Ilheus, said Fernando Melo, an official with Aerostar, the private passenger service that owns the plane.

The control tower's last communication from the pilots was at 5:45 p.m., about 10 minutes before the aircraft was to arrive in Ilheus, Melo said.

"It was flying perfectly," the airline's business manager, Ellen Duarte, told The Associated Press. "The pilot said he was making a visual approach to the airport, and that was the last we heard."

Authorities were searching a 123-mile stretch of the Atlantic Ocean for the plane.

Duarte didn't identify the passengers, according to the AP. She told the news service the businessmen are hotel and condominium owners in Bahia. E-mail to a friend

CNN's Helena DeMoura contributed to this report.

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