Video: Pilot survives 18 hours in lake after plane crash
AP
A New York pilot has survived a long 18 hours in Lake Huron after crashing his two-seater plane into it.
Michael Trapp, a 42-year-old mechanic, told how he swam in the lake for nearly a day because he 'wasn't ready to die yet'.
He left his home in Gouverneur, New York, on Tuesday to attend a family reunion in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
He decided to fly his own plane because, at $400, it was cheaper than the $922 return commercial flight.
As he crossed over Canada everything seemed fine, but the plane's engine started to sputter over Michigan.
He contacted flight officials in Lansing to tell them he was going down while the plane was at 3,000 feet, Trapp told local Fox affiliate WWNY. He then crashed near Harbor Beach, 105 miles north of Detroit.
'I just kept struggling and struggling,' he said, telling reporters that he tried to use a credit card to reflect the sun to get the attention of nearby boats.
'It's amazing what goes on in your mind when you're laying in water and you look up at the skies and watch the shooting stars and watch meteorites go round. Gives you time to realise what's important in life at that point,' Trapp told local New York station WWNY-TV while recovering at Saginaw hospitall.
Finally, at around 10:20am on Wednesday, Dean and Diane Petitpren, a couple from Grosse Pointe Farms near Detroit, saw him waving his sock in the water and took him aboard their yacht.
