With the aircraft sinking and the situation seemingly hopeless, the passenger aboard the small plane that plunged into the Hudson River Sunday desperately called his family before dialing 911.

“I said [to my wife], ‘Don’t say anything, just listen. Tell the kids I love them, I have to go,’ ” Christopher Smidt recalled yesterday.

Thirty minutes later, Smidt’s wife, Karen, learned he and the single-engine plane’s pilot, Deniece De Priester, were safe.

Smidt, 43, said he wasn’t sure he’d make it. After 15 minutes in the icy water near Yonkers, his body started shutting down.

But then he heard the sound of the rescue boat and cops who pulled him to safety.