Selig Altschul, long a premier financial expert and counselor to the aviation industry and those investing in it, died yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 78 and until recently also kept a home in Pawling, N.Y.
He died of cancer, his family said.
Mr. Altschul's company, Aviation Advisory Service Inc. in Manhattan, served leading airlines and aircraft companies in this country and abroad. He established his consulting practice in 1947 and headed it as president until he suffered a stroke in 1990.
He also wrote for financial newspapers and magazines on the economics of transportation industries. He and his wife, Marylin Bender, were the coauthors of "The Chosen.Instrument," a biography of Juan Trippe, the founder of Pan American World Airways (Simon & Schuster, 1982).
Began as a Securities Analyst
A native of Chicago, Mr. Altschul .graduated from Northwestern University in 1934, when he started his career as a railroad securities analyst for Chicago brokerage houses. At the same time, he began to write financial articles on the budding airline industry, whose swagger was about to be reined, in by the regulators under the 1938 Civil Aeronautics Act.
His writings gained him an invitation to join the new Federal Civil Aeronautics Board as a senior analyst from 1941 to 1943. Then, while serving in the United States Army Air Force, he took part in the Strategic Bombing Survey of Germany. He returned to the C.A.B. as chief analyst in 1946 but left for Wall Street the following year to start his I company.
Mr. Altschul advised airlines and investment banks on regulatory matters and on how to finance the growth of the airline industry. He often appeared as an expert witness before government agencies and United States Tax Courts. He took on various government assignments, working as a consultant to the Congressional Aviation Policy Board, the Senate COM2 merce Committee and, in 1955, as head of a Hoover Commission task force that examined the capabilities and performance of the Military Air Transportation Service.
President John F. Kennedy named him to his Task Force on National Aviation Goals, known as Project Horizon.
In the early 1960's Mr. Altschul also played a pivotal role in the merger of debt-ridden Capital Airlines, then the country's fifth largest, into United Air Lines.
In 1977, the United States Railway Association asked him to to serve as chairman and chief executive of the Delaware & Hudson Railway to save it from bankruptcy. He did so for a year and remained a director until 1983, when the company was acquired by Guilford Transportation Industries.
Over the years, he also held directorships in several corporations, including Western Union Corporation and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Trust Company.
In addition to his wife, a former reporter and editor of The New York Times, Mr. Altschul is survived by two sons, Michael F. of Arlington,, VA.,.and James S. of Manhattan; and two brothers , Herman and Suilnty, both of Chicago.