The pilot and passenger who miraculously survived a small plane crash in the icy Hudson River were in “good spirits” and cracked jokes after they swam to shore Monday night.
The pair was found by first responders in Newburgh inside a waterfront warehouse, where they had changed into dry clothes they had found.
“The pilot was making jokes to us about the clothes he was wearing because they had taken clothes from the warehouse that weren’t theirs — obviously to get out of the wet clothes,” Carrie Massari-Carey, Assistant Chief at the Town of Newburgh Emergency Medical Services, told The Post Tuesday.
“They were definitely in good spirits.”
Their Cessna 172 went down in the frigid river near New York Stewart International Airport around 8 p.m. — with the pilot and passenger swimming to safety in a feat Gov. Kathy Hochul called “another miracle on the Hudson.”
Moments after the crash, first responders were deployed to the shoreline up and down the river to account for the strong current that could quickly whisk away the plane and passengers.
They located the plane with flashlights in the darkness, but the pilot and passenger had already made it to shore. They were found in the warehouse about 10 to 15 minutes after the crash was initially reported, Massari-Carey said.
The two suffered no serious injuries but were taken to a local hospital for possible hypothermia as a precaution, she said.
The Cessna 172 that went down, built in 1978, appears to be owned by Long Island Flying, a flying school in Suffolk County, according to the tail number. Multiple calls to the school were not returned Tuesday morning.
Data from Flightradar24 showed that the privately owned plane left from MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma around 6:55 p.m. and crashed into the Hudson about an hour later.
The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed it is investigating the crash, but had no additional updates Tuesday.
Hochul called the safe rescue of the two people “another miracle on the Hudson,” in a post on X late Monday.
“Thank God both the pilot and passenger of a single engine plane that performed an ice landing near Newburgh have been located with only minor injuries,” she said.
The plane is expected to be removed from the river by the US Coast Guard on Tuesday, a local fire official said.
Massari-Carey said it was one of the most interesting calls she’s ever responded to in her career.
“I think seeing the plane in the water, seeing the patients come out and being as stable as they were for me was pretty shocking,” she said. “I think everybody was pretty shocked, honestly. Just thankful that they were alive.”
The original “Miracle on the Hudson” happened in 2009, when a bird strike caused a double-engine failure of US Airways Flight 1549 — and pilots Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles skillfully crash landed the jetliner in the Hudson River.
All 155 people aboard survived.
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