NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The pilot of the Boeing 707 that crashed in the Azores Wednesday was engaged to be married in May to a young flight attendant also aboard the doomed flight, friends said.
The jet, leased by the charter flight service Independent Air Corp. of Smyrna, Tenn., slammed into a mountain on the island of Santa Maria en route from Bergamo, Italy, to the Dominican Republic, killing all 145 people aboard.
The pilot, Capt. Douglas Leon Daugherty, 41, of Nashville, and his fiancee, Yvette Murray, 26, of Marietta, Ga., were among the seven American crew members aboard the flight with 138 Italian tourists.
'They were going to be married in May,' said Richard Thomas, a radio traffic reporter for radio station WSM in Nashville who had known Daugherty since childhood.
'He had given her a ring at Christmas. He had never been married before and she hadn't either. They had contracted with a guy in Atlanta to build them a house,' Thomas said.
Daugherty's mother, Robbie Daugherty, said she and her husband first learned of the crash while watching television.
'My husband was sitting here this morning and saw the report on television that an Independent Air plane had crashed in the Azores and that everyone on board was killed,' she said.
'I walked the floor until I couldn't take it any more, then I called the Independent Air office in Atlanta. They told me he was the pilot. We never worried too much about his job. He loved his flying.'
Daugherty was a chief warrant officer in the Tennessee Army National Guard. Col. Robert Whitworth, director of aviation for the Guard, described Daugherty as 'a very good aviator.'
'He was very professional and competent, and, as far as we are concerned, was never anything less than a very good aviator,' Whitworth said. 'He took things to heart. When he went to do something, he really put himself into it.'
Maj. Hooper Penuel, the Guard's state public affairs director, said Daugherty had logged 8,800 hours in the air, which he said showed considerable experience.
Daugherty had been with Independent Air for two years, said the company's president, Al Pittman. He also was a Nashville policeman in the 1970s.
'He liked law enforcement work,' said Assistant Police Chief Robert Kirchner. 'But I think his real love was aviation.'
