Nicholas Sabatini, who began his working life as a New York City police officer before launching a 30-year career with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that culminated with a seven-year stint as associate administrator for aviation safety, died Nov. 27 at age 88.
After leaving the FAA, he opened an aviation consultancy to provide advice and safety assessment services to aviation organizations worldwide. He also served as a member of the Flight Safety Foundation Board of Governors.
Sabatini was born in Vasto, Italy, and immigrated to New York at age 2 with his parents and three older sisters. After two years in the U.S. Army, he joined the New York Police Department (NYPD) as a patrol officer and later moved to the department’s Mounted Division and then to its Aviation Department. He left the NYPD in 1976 to join the U.S. Customs Drug Interdiction Air Unit.
In 1978, he began work at the FAA, first as an operations inspector and later as Flight Sta…
