Scope and Contents

This collection consists of 15.52 cubic feet of documents relating to the aviation career of Morten S. Beyer, documenting both his time with various airlines and his career as an aviation consultant. The following types of material are included: speeches, cartoons, correspondence, financial reports, newsletters, conference programs, newspaper articles, scrapbooks, and aviation market research reports.

This collection was organized by Mr. Beyer in chronological order reflecting his involvement in the aviation industry. Please note, during processing some original file titles were transcribed. These are indicated with quotation marks. Mr. Beyer did not separate personal and professional correspondence. Correspondence pertaining to events that occurred in between Mr. Beyer's professional engagements are interfiled in chronological order. The processing archivist maintained this order.

Note: The digital images in this finding aid were repurposed from scans made by an outside contractor for a commercial product and may show irregular cropping and orientation in addition to color variations resulting from damage to and deterioration of the original objects.

Arrangement

This collection is organized by Mr. Beyer's employment in chronological order. The arrangement reflects Mr. Beyer's original organization. Files listed in quotation marks indicate the exact titles taken from Mr. Beyer's folders.

Biographical/Historical note

Morten S. Beyer (1921-2010) was one of the first aviation consultants and the author of articles and newsletters analyzing the economic trends of aviation. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College in 1943, Beyer started his aviation career at Pan American Airways (PAA), where he established and directed the first centralized scheduling and operations control office. He left PAA in 1948 to work for Capital Airlines, Inc., where he was the assistant to the Senior Vice President of Operations and Maintenance. In 1960, Beyer went to work at Riddle Airlines, Inc., as Senior Vice President, Operations and Sales, of Riddle's overall activities. From 1964 to 1967, Beyer was employed by Trans World Airlines, Inc. (TWA), where he was appointed the System General Manager and Deputy Director General for Saudi Arabian Airlines, responsible for the performance of TWA's contract with Saudi Arabian Airlines. From 1967-1971, Beyer was the President of Modern Air Transport, a charter airline, and in 1971 he become the President of Capitol Airlines where he remained until 1972 when he bought the stock of bankrupt Universal Airlines. He attempted to refinance the airline into a new company, Phoenix Airlines, but due to the nation's fuel crisis sparked by the Arab oil embargo, he failed to accomplish this and accepted the presidency of Johnson International Airlines in 1973.

In 1974, Beyer established AVMARK, an aviation international consulting company. As a regular feature he established one of the first aviation newsletters. He also published a book of Transport Aircraft Values (TAV), which forecasted aircraft values twenty years in to the future, using a formula that accounted for inflation, fuel price fluctuations and labor cost variables. This formula became a standard for aircraft appraisals and made Beyer a trusted appraiser and marketing expert. Beyer testified before Congress twice and was a guest-expert on many television news programs. In 1993, Beyer sold AVMARK and founded Morten Beyer and Associates, later Morten Beyer and Agnew, which continued aviation consulting in France and Japan. Beyer retired in 2003.

The following timeline covers key events in Morten Beyer's life as well as world events. Events involving Mr. Beyer are shown in normal type world events are shown in italics.