Flight Instructor and Teen Student Survive Emergency Landing on Hudson River

A Long Island flight instructor and a teenage student pilot walked away from a small plane crash into the Hudson River Monday night — surviving frigid temperatures and what state police described as a near-certain death, had the river not been frozen.

New York State Police identified the instructor as Liam Darcy, 31, affiliated with Long Island Flying, a flight school based in Southampton. His student, a 17-year-old from the Hudson Valley who has been flying for a year and a half, was not publicly named. Both were treated for hypothermia at a local hospital and released.

“Were it not for the ice, the two would most likely not have survived.”

— New York State Police

Orange County officials, speaking to News 12, confirmed the timeline: The two had departed Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma for a nighttime training flight — the kind of routine session that pilots log to build hours for their licenses. Their destination was Stewart International Airport in New Windsor, roughly 60 miles to the north in the Hudson Valley.

Shortly before 8 p.m., the Cessna 172 — a four-seat, single-engine trainer used by flight schools across the country — developed engine trouble near West Point. Darcy reported the emergency to controllers at Stewart Airport and took the controls. He guided the aircraft down onto a frozen stretch of the Hudson approximately 200 feet from shore south of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge.

The two emerged from the aircraft on their own and traversed roughly 150 feet of river ice before it gave way, forcing them to swim approximately 50 feet to reach the bank. Water temperatures in the Hudson in late winter hover near freezing.

Responding agencies included the City of Newburgh Police Department, Town of Newburgh Police Department, Town of New Windsor Police Department, Orange County Sheriff’s Office, New York State Police Aviation Unit, Underwater Recovery Team, Unmanned Aircraft Systems Unit, and Bureau of Criminal Investigation at Montgomery, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Orange County Department of Emergency Services, multiple EMS agencies, and area fire departments including marine units.

The investigation is on-going, and the State Police are working in partnership with the Federal Aviation Administration, National Transportation Safety Board, United States Coast Guard, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Image: The Cessna 172 made an emergency landing in the Hudson River just south of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge. Both people aboard were rescued. (Middle Hope Fire Department)

This article was updated on March 3, 2026 to include the multi-agency response and the agencies involved in the ongoing invesatigation.