In March 2009, he was replaced as the airline's CEO and was put in charge of expanding sales and marketing efforts after Republic Airways became a 50% shareholder.
Boyer, who dropped out of college, was an entrepreneurial-minded baggage handler at Seattle-based Alaska Airlines who, in response to information posted about in-flight entertainment challenges on the Alaska Airlines employee website, conceived of a portable hard-disk based video on demand media player that he later named the "digEplayer.
"[2][3] On behalf of Aircraft Protective Systems (APS), a Washington corporation he founded earlier to commercialize other products he developed for the aircraft industry, he obtained $2.5 million initial financing from family and an Angel investor to fully develop and market his conceived product, which became the first self-contained portable video on demand (VOD) in-flight Entertainment (IFE) device.
[6] Boyer was able to convince 20th Century Fox to provide first-run movies and other studio content for the player.
[10][11] In August 2003, Boyer signed an exclusive marketing and distribution agreement with Springville, Utah–based aircraft parts distributor Wencor and two months later sold the company to Wencor, which renamed APS "digEcor.