Two men in their 20s are dead after a small plane crashed in Algonquin Provincial Park in central Ontario on Tuesday night.

The pilot of the plane issued a mayday call at around 8:30 p.m., saying there was an airborne emergency. The signal was picked up by a commercial Air Canada flight and passed on to air traffic control in Toronto.

Air traffic control couldn't find the plane on their radar, so they estimated the pilot's position and directed him to fly to the nearest airport.

According to Capt. Jean Houde of the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Trenton, the pilot said his plane was near Bancroft, about 130 kilometres north of the airport in Trenton.

JRCC Trenton tried to direct the plane south, planning to light up a runway in Trenton as a visual reference.

Sometime later, air traffic control told JRCC Trenton they believed the plane was west of Bancroft in Haliburton.

At 9:30 p.m., the pilot sent a message saying the engine had quit and the plane was going down, "presumably because he was out of fuel," Houde told CTV Toronto on Wednesday.

"Not long after that, Toronto Centre reported that an (emergency) distress beacon was being heard in the area," Houde said.

An extensive search began, and a CH-146 Griffin helicopter and a CC-130 Hercules aircraft were deployed from JRCC Trenton.

By 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the Cessna 150 was found south of Whitney, Ont. in an area not accessible by vehicle. The wreckage was approximately 40 kilometres northeast of Haliburton in a heavily treed part of Algonquin Park.

It was found about eight kilometres off Highway 127, Houde said.

Two search and rescue technicians were lowered down to the scene from the Griffin helicopter. They discovered the 25-year-old pilot and his passenger, believed to be in his 20s, were deceased.

The men have not yet been identified, but Houde said the pilot had logged 200 hours in the air. He'd rented the Cessna from Fly Block Time, a Toronto-based company that leases small planes for short trips, according to Toronto Airways president Derek Sifton.

Fly Block Time told CP24's Cam Woolley that the pilot had spent 30 hours in the air over the last month in the same plane that crashed.

The pair left Toronto Buttonville Municipal Airport on Tuesday morning bound for Peterborough. Their plan was to head to St. Hubert, Que., Ottawa and then back to Buttonville, Houde said.

"As he was heading back home, that's when things turned sour."

Houde said that weather conditions likely led to the crash. Visibility was limited Tuesday night, he said, and it's likely the pilot became disoriented. He had limited navigation equipment on board.