Already an accomplished novelist, Beaty turned his attention to identifying the possible causes behind aviation accidents attributed to pilot error, enrolling at University College London to read psychology. Having completed the degree course in a single year, rather than the traditional three years, Beaty became a civil servant in 1967 before publishing his first non-fiction work, The Human Factor in Aircraft Accidents in 1969. This was followed by The Water Jump: The Story of Transatlantic Flight (1976), The Complete Skytraveller (1979) and Strange Encounters: Mysteries of the Air (1982), before he returned to the subject of his first non-fiction book in The Naked Pilot - The Human Factor in Aircraft Accidents (1991).