YONKERS, N.Y. (AP) – A student pilot and his instructor who made a desperate radio plea for help before their small plane crashed into the Hudson River on Monday were rescued by divers and helicopter crews.

“Engine out!” they exclaimed over their radio just before the crash. “We’re going into the water!”

Instructor John Eberle, 43, of Marlton, N.J., and student Mark Sorey, 44, of Burlington, N.J., were the only ones aboard when the single-engine plane, owned by a New Jersey flight school, went down shortly before noon off the Yonkers city pier. The pair were pulled from the 50-degree water by New York City police and Coast Guard divers who jumped into the river from hovering rescue helicopters, which then lifted the victims by basket and flew them to a Bronx hospital.

Both were reported in stable condition, suffering from hypothermia, at Jacobi Medical Center, New York Police Department spokesman Detective John Sweeney said.

Sorey was flying the Piper Arrow 28 south along the river when the engine suddenly quit, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters said.

“The instructor took over the controls and the student got on the radio, declared an emergency and a mayday,” Peters said.

A Delta Air Lines pilot who heard the distress call notified a control tower, which had the plane on radar, Peters said. The emergency call triggered an immediate search for the aircraft.

The two helicopters, which responded separately from Brooklyn and Atlantic City, N.J., were on the scene “very fast, and the divers were in the water very fast, and survival is very much related to that,” Yonkers police emergency services Capt. Frank Messar said.

The victims were in the water about 15 to 20 minutes, he said.

The plane, also known as a Piper Warrior, took off from South Jersey Regional airport at Mount Holly, near Trenton. The FAA’s Web site lists the plane as owned by Trinity Aviation Inc., of Burlington, N.J. There was no phone listing for such a company, and a phone number could not be found for the address on the Web site.

Max Coyle, a Yonkers battalion fire chief, said his unit received a call from Westchester County fire control about a plane in the water about a mile north of the Bronx border. First responders “saw two people in the water, one clinging to wreckage and one swimming with the aid of a seat cushion,” he said.

Two NYPD boats and one Coast Guard craft also were at the scene.

A team from the National Transportation Safety Board took charge of the investigation, Yonkers police said. Police efforts to recover the aircraft were impeded by currents that pushed the wreck a mile or more downstream, Peters said.

The NYPD was attempting to locate the sunken plane on sonar but a decision to raise it from 45 feet of water would be made by the NTSB, Yonkers police said.

River currents were slack so plane debris and the victims did not drift far from the crash site, Messar said. Floating logs and other debris were in the river.

The Coast Guard put a safety zone around the crash site to keep other craft away.

AP-ES-01-02-06 1750EST

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