Darinda Ogden Nilsen loved to fly, just as she loved to ski, ice skate and dance. She also spoke fluent French, which came in handy because her job as a flight attendant with Comair often took her to Montreal.

The 26-year-old Lexington, Ky., resident majored in language at the University of Louisville, and spent the summer between her junior and senior years in France and elsewhere in Europe on a special work program.

A scholarship student in high school and college who played piano and violin, she met her husband, Richard Nilsen at Louisville where he was in equine studies. They were married at the First Baptist Church in Newport, Ky., where she had played the piano as a teen-ager.

Her mother, Ruth Ogden, said Ms. Nilsen always wanted to fly, and had set her sights on being a Delta flight attendant. But a chance meeting at a restaurant with a Comair executive led her to the company's flight attendant school and a job just months after she graduated from college.

When Ms. Nilsen, who used her maiden name at work, wasn't flying for Comair, she enjoyed her home life with her husband and their Samoyed dog, Edelweiss.

She often visited her parents' home in Fort Thomas, Ky., and her room was always ready when she needed to sleep before an early morning flight and didn't have time for the 90-mile trip each way to and from Lexington.