WHAT should have been a five-minute cable car ride turned into a nearly 12-hour ordeal for dozens of people who had be rescued yesterday after two cars lost power over New York's East River.

What should have been a routine ride across New York’s East River became an hours-long ordeal after what US authorities described as a power failure left two cable cars carrying almost 70 people dangling hundreds of feet in the air.

Dozens of people in two cable cars are hanging hundreds of feet above New York’s East River today, hours after the system lost power because of a mechanical problem.