[chris]

A flight instructor and her passenger escaped a sinking plane in the Hudson River on Jan. 27, 2013, after the aircraft's engine lost power during a sightseeing flight and she ditched it into the water off Yonkers, New York, according to federal accident records and police accounts of the rescue.

Deniece de Preister, 39, of East Windsor, New Jersey, was flying a single-engine Piper PA-32-260 Cherokee Six with passenger Christopher Smidt, 43, of Colonia, New Jersey, when the engine began to stutter near a radio tower at Alpine, New Jersey, on the Palisades, the National Transportation Safety Board found. She applied carburetor heat and briefly regained power, but the engine cut out again as she tried to climb, and she radioed a mayday call before putting the plane down on the river.

On the 911 recording, Smidt told dispatcher Melissa Seymour that the cabin was taking on water. "The plane is filling up," he said, then "get out, get out, we're going down." Moments later he said the water was freezing and that he needed a boat, telling Seymour he was not going to make it to shore. Seymour, who worked for Westchester County's emergency communications center, stayed on the line and directed both occupants to get clear of the sinking aircraft.

De Preister and Smidt wore life vests and swam free before the plane went under, then spent close to 20 minutes in the frigid water. An off-duty Yonkers police detective, Daniel Higgins Sr., located them by boat with his 12-year-old son helping pull them from the river. Both were taken to Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx and treated for hypothermia, and both were released within a day.

Divers pulled the wreckage from the riverbed on Feb. 7, 2013, and investigators shipped the engine and airframe to a storage facility in Clayton, Delaware, for teardown. Examiners found a sand-like substance in the carburetor's fuel screen and corrosion on some spark plug leads, but the NTSB's final report, issued that June, concluded the partial loss of power could not be explained by any mechanical defect found afterward.

Higgins and the other off-duty officers who took part in the rescue were later commended by Yonkers city officials for reaching the pair before hypothermia set in.