Sarah Nilsson

Sarah Nilsson has both an aviation and a legal background. She is a dedicated and determined educator with outstanding analytical, organizational, and planning skills. She began her pilot career in 1994 and has run a flight school at a local high school magnet program, flown cargo aircraft, and business jets, having been typed in a Citation.She holds an FAA Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certificate in multi and single engine fixed-wing airplanes, a gold seal flight instructor CFI, CFII, MEI, a small UAS or drone pilot certificate and a TRUST certificate. She also held North Carolina’s Division of Aviation UAS Operators Knowledge Test Certificate of Completion. In Canada, she holds Transport Canada’s Pilot Certificate in Small Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS), Visual Line-of-sight (VLOS). Sarah holds UK’s Drone and model aircraft certificate in A1 & A3 Open Subcategory. In 2014, Sarah began her legal career, becoming licensed by the State Bar of Arizona and becoming founder and managing attorney of Nilsson Law, PLLC. Since 2015, she has been full-time faculty at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) in Prescott, Arizona, teaching in traditional settings and online, Aviation Law, Global Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) Regulations, Concepts in Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), Global UAS Risk Management, UAS Ground School, How to start a small UAS Business, Business Law, and Business Ethics. She is now a tenured professor, and for four years led the Prescott Faculty Senate as Speaker. Being a tech savvy educator, a number of years ago she created, and to this day continues to maintain, her own website for educational purposes (www.sarahnilsson.org) on topics like health, fitness, nutrition, work-life balance, pilot training, aviation law, business law, business ethics, space policy and law, uncrewed aircraft law, and advanced air mobility law, both domestically and internationally. She regularly updates these web pages with current events in those fields. Sarah volunteers as a FAA Safety Team Representative with the Scottsdale Flight Standards District Office (FSDO). During the pandemic, she flew as a command pilot with Angel Flight West as she felt the need to put her Cherokee 235 (aka Flying Broom) to good use! Sarah is co-author of the 6th (2015), 7th (2020), and 8th (2024) editions of Practical Aviation and Aerospace Law, with Scott Hamilton. In 2017, she published her own book on U.S. Drone Law for the American Bar Association entitled Drones Across America. And in 2023, she published a free eBook for ERAU entitled Drones Across the World. Sarah has made multiple media appearances as an expert in UAS regulation, law, and policy and has published many articles and research documents for the FAA and NASA.