Wreckage of an ultralight aircraft, which went missing in October last year with two persons on board, has been recovered at Machhapuchhre VDC in Kaski district.

A team of Nepal Police and Armed Police Force (APF) on Sunday recovered the wreckage along with mortal remains of Russian pilot Vallery Buttenin, 60, and South African woman Elizabeth Well, 40, from the accident site.

The ultralight aircraft with call sign 9-NALI went missing during a sightseeing flight over Pokhara. The aircraft had gone out of contact seven minutes after it took off from Pokhara Airport on October 8, 2015. Officials said the ultralight went out of contact soon after the pilot contacted the tower informing they were flying around Sarangkot and heading towards Annapurna Base Camp. “The aircraft seems to have caught fire after it crashed at an altitude of 11,951 feet at MachhapuchHre VDC,” said APF SSP Krishna Bhakta Bhramacharya. “The bodies of both onboard were consumed by the fire leaving behind their skeletal remains.”

The security personnel collected the skeletal remains scattered in the incident site and brought them to Pokhara along with a wheel of the craft. Forensic expert of Nepal Police Sub-Inspector Ram Adhikari and APF head constables Purnalal Devkota and Tejendra Budha reached the incident site and collected the human remains.

“We will send the skeletal remains to Police Forensic Science Laboratory in Kathmandu for DNA test. The remains will be handed over to the families after carrying out DNA cross match,” said Adhikari.

It took very long time to locate the spot despite an extensive search in various suspected places. “We were very worried as we could not recover the wreckage for a long time,” said Pomnarayan Shrestha, the managing director of Pokhara Ultralight, adding that the ultralight company had also announced a bounty to find the incident site but to no avail. “Jim Gosser, a pilot of Dynasty Air, spotted the incident site on Saturday,” said Shrestha.

The security personnel reached the incident site in remote place, after being informed by the ultralight company. “There is no human settlement nearby. We brought only skeletal remains and a wheel as it was not possible to bring other parts in a helipad which is about half an hour walk from the incident site,” said a policeman who reached the site.