Timothy Lilley, the father of American Airlines pilot Sam Lilley, says his son was planning for his wedding before this week’s fatal plane crash in Washington, D.C.
“Tim,” as the 58-year-old pilot for a private jet company goes by, tells PEOPLE that his wife was helping Sam and his fiancée to find the perfect place for their ceremony just hours before AA Flight 5342 collided with a Black Hawk helicopter near Ronald Reagan National Airport on Wednesday, Jan. 29.
A total of 67 people died when the two aircraft plummeted into the Potomac River. There were 60 passengers and four crew members on the American Airlines regional plane and three people on the military helicopter.
“The day that this happened, my wife was looking at venues for them the day he died,” Tim tells PEOPLE.
He notes that his wife is Sam’s stepmother, but that the Lilleys were looking forward to seeing their family grow.
Sam and his fiancée lived in Charlotte, N.C., since his job at PSA Airlines, which is part of the American Airlines Group, was based there, but the couple was planning to have their wedding in Savannah, Ga.
“He loved working for PSA,” his father tells PEOPLE.
“He was engaged to a girl that he met in the junior high. They were friends back then, but they had not seen each other and they re-engaged in the last few years, and they were going to get married in the fall. And we love her. We were happy to have her join 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.
At 14, he helped raise $5,000 to build clean water wells in Africa. After high school, Sam went to Georgia Southern as a marketing major.
“So he did that and when he finished, he worked in marketing for just a few months, and he decided that wasn’t for him, so he called me up and told me he wanted to become a pilot,” Tim tells PEOPLE. “And of course, I was like, ‘We should’ve had this conversation years ago, you knucklehead.’ ”
Tim says before the accident, Sam “was just meeting the requirements to upgrade to captain.”
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In an emotional Facebook post shared Thursday, Jan. 30, Tim wrote, “I was so proud when Sam became a pilot. Now it hurts so bad I can’t even cry myself to sleep.”
“I know I’ll see him again but my heart is breaking,” he continued. “He was doing great in his career and his personal life. He was engaged to get married in the fall.”
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating the crash, with the NTSB leading.
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