The heartbroken father of the 20-year-old co-pilot killed on the Learjet that crashed in Florida last weekend wept Friday as he said he wished he had been on the flight with her.

“I wanted to be by her side. Inside the plane, to help, to be by her. I had to be next to her,” Allan Filgueiras, dad of fallen aviator Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, said at a press conference.

Filgueiras held back tears as he called his daughter his “soulmate” and said he was proud of her for keeping a cool head during the emergency.

“I did listen to [her radio transmissions] many times, trying to find a clue in my head how that happened. And wow, she’s tough,” Filgueiras said.