From the cockpit, Patrick Merkle estimated his aircraft had ended up 60 to 100 feet off the ground, pinned to a power line at a 45-degree angle. Twenty minutes after the crash, with no ladder on-site or rescuers climbing up, he and his passenger considered exiting the plane and jumping onto the tower.

“I just moved the panel that gives us enough room to get out,” Merkle, 66, calmly told the 911 dispatcher. “I think it’s safer outside.”

His single-engine plane became entangled in power lines in Montgomery County about 5:30 p.m. Sunday, and he worried that the aircraft would become dislodged from the tower. The plane already was shifting with the wind, he said, as he pleaded for help. He and his passenger, Janet Williams, were growing cold. He had a bleeding nose. She potentially had a rib fracture. Both had head injuries.

“I’m just concerned about our situation and the possibility that we could slip out of this tower,” Merkle told dispatcher Laurel Manion, continuing to describe their location and injuries. “That would not be a survivable distance.”

Recordings of the 911 calls Merkle and Williams made shortly after they crashed Sunday offer new details of the 10-hour ordeal and what might have factored into the plane’s crash into Pepco transmission lines. The crash occurred about a mile from their destination at the Montgomery County Airpark in the Gaithersburg area.

Merkle, reached by phone Tuesday, said it was “absolutely a miracle” that he and Williams, 65, were alive. “How many people sit 150 feet off the ground and worry about whether or not they’re even going to be able to survive?” he said.

Merkle was discharged from a hospital Monday. Williams was expected to be discharged Tuesday, Merkle said.

The cause of the crash hasn’t been determined. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the probe, said the investigation is ongoing and the aircraft would be moved to a facility Tuesday for analysis. An update on the crash isn’t expected for weeks, agency spokeswoman Sarah Sulick said Tuesday.

Weather in the Washington region at the time of the crash was misty and rainy, but it wasn’t clear whether those conditions factored into the crash. Merkle said Tuesday that he is waiting to be interviewed by the NTSB and declined to comment further, citing the ongoing investigation. The 911 recordings, however, offer clues to what might have gone wrong.

“What exactly happened before the crash? Was it, like, a visibility issue?” Manion asked the pilot as she tried to keep them calm.

“Yes, totally a visibility . . .” he said. “We were looking for the airport. I descended to the minimum altitude and then apparently, I got down a little lower than I should have.”

The crash sent rescuers into a complex overnight effort to get the pair and the aircraft safely to the ground. The crash caused widespread power outages, prompted the county’s school district to cancel classes, and revived concerns about safety surrounding a regional airport where at least 30 crashes have occurred nearby in the past four decades.