Plane crash survivor cheats death twice

An auto mechanic from Northern New York almost died this week - twice.

First, he survived a small plane crash. Then, he came close to drowning. But somehow he survived it all.

Michael Trapp crash landed into Lake Huron and then had to tread water for more than 17 hours before being found.

It was supposed to be a routine flight from New York to Wisconsin for a family reunion, but midway over Lake Huron, 42-year-old Trapp suddenly found himself in an emergency situation, calling for help.

"I'm going down right now," he said. "I gave them my bearing. I told them I'm 29.2 miles from shore. I said, 'Get out here. I don't want to die.'"

After losing the engine on his two-seat Cessna, the auto mechanic plummeted 3,000 feet and crashed into the water 17 miles east of Harbor Beach, Mich.

"The tail hit, the wheels hit, instantly upside down," he recalled. "It was a bit of a violent crash, the windshield blew right into my face. ... Glass (flew) right into me. The door was open, I went to get out. Couldn't. Undid my seat belt and then I swam out of the plane."

Uninjured and alone, Trapp swam for more than 17 hours without a life jacket, unsure whether he would make it home alive.

"The one thing I wanted one more time was to wrap my arms around my wife and my mom," he said. "Hold my family just one more time."

Trapp says while he was treading water he tried to flag down passing boats, but it wasn't until he put his sock on his hand and waved for help that a couple from Michigan finally found him.

Dean Petitpren, who helped rescue Trapp, said, "His eyes were starting to close. He went down once. He knows once you start falling asleep that's probably going to be it. ... The timing was perfect. I mean, if we would have left five minutes early or later this morning it probably would have been a different story."

On "The Early Show" Trapp recalled of the plane crash, "A lot goes through your mind. They teach you how to crash a plane so I was trying to get a hold of the FAA to tell everybody where I was, make the plane ready for landing so you can get out and I was just going through checklist to keep the engine running and everything I could possibly think of to keep myself in the air, prepare for hitting the water."

Finally able to free himself from the plane before it sank to the bottom, Trapp couldn't see anything at first.

"The waves are like 10 feet tall. I had my shoes and pants on, I couldn't swim," he said. "So I had to kick them off. The swell went to the top, I could see a tower on the land in Michigan, and that's as soon as, every time I went to the top I kept my eyeball looking for the tower. I just kept on my back, kept paddling towards that tower."

He said the will to survive kept him going.

Was Trapp a good swimmer before the crash?

"I don't swim a lot. I'm not that active. I don't walk a lot. I guess I'm just fat enough where my body stayed warm in the water, I kept my core temperature up enough," he explained.

After 13 boats went by, Trapp was losing hope. But then his fate changed by the 14th boat.

After cheating death twice, Trapp says he going to stay on land and stick to driving for now.

Trapp is very grateful to be alive.

He said, "I feel lucky."