Committed Pilot’s family looked at wedding places the day of DC Aircraft (exclusive)

Timothy Lilly, father of American Airlines -Pilot Sam Lilly, says his son was planning for his wedding before this week’s deadly plane crash in Washington, DC

“Tim,” as the 58-year-old pilot for a private jet company goes by, people say his wife helped Sam and his fiancé find the perfect place for their ceremony just hours before Aa Flight 5342 collided with a black Hauk Helicopter near Ronald Reagan National Airport on Wednesday, January 29th.

A total of 67 people died when the two planes dropped into the Potomac River. There were 60 passengers and four crew on the US regional aircraft and three people on the military helicopter.

“The day this happened, so my wife saw at venues for them the day he died,” Tim tells people.

He notes that his wife is Sam’s stepmother, but that Lilleys is looking forward to watching their family grow.

Sam and his fiancé lived in Charlotte, NC, since his job at PSA Airlines, which is part of the American Airlines Group, was based there, but the couple planned to have their wedding in Savannah, GA.

“He loved to work for PSA,” his father says people.

“He was engaged to a girl he met in the junior height. They were friends at the time, but they had not seen each other and they engaged again in the last few years and they were to marry in the fall. And we love her. We were happy to have her participate in our family, but it just didn’t work, ”Tim continues.

Sam followed in Tim’s footsteps and became a pilot after learning early on that a career in marketing was not for him, Tim explains.

Sam was born in Hawaii, while Tim was based there for the army but grew up in Savannah.

As a 14 -year he helped collect $ 5,000 to build clean water wells in Africa. After high school, Sam went to Georgia Southern as Marketing Major.

“Then he did, and when he was done, he worked in marketing for just a few months and he decided it wasn’t for him, so he called me up and told me he would become a pilot,” says Tim to people. “And of course I was like, ‘We should have had this conversation years ago, you Knucklehead.’ ”

Tim says before the accident that Sam “just met the requirements to upgrade to Captain.”

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In an emotional Facebook post Shared on Thursday, January 30, Tim wrote, “I was so proud when Sam became a pilot. Now it hurts so bad that I can’t even cry myself to sleep.”

“I know I want to see him again, but my heart breaks,” he continued. “He was doing well in his career and his personal life. He was engaged to marry in the fall.”

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) examines the crash where NTSB led.