An aircraft’s registration can change. A commercial carrier can be sold. Neither fact supplies the missing flight manifest. This atlas follows the physical airplanes and the documentary record from Iran–Contra to the later cargo economy and corporate fleets.
Cover photograph: Southern Air Transport L-100-30 N908SJ at Travis AFB, 17 June 1993. U.S. Navy / PH2 Bruce Trombecky, U.S. National Archives via Wikimedia Commons. This image does not identify a 1986 weapons flight.
The 1988 federal court record confirms that a Southern Air–operated, SAFAIR-leased Hercules carried weapons from El Salvador to Honduras in February 1986. The opinion does not provide that aircraft’s manufacturer serial number. Other historic airframes can be traced through photographs, company filings and accident records, but their presence in a fleet does not establish that they flew a particular mission.
Later records bring the investigation to Columbus, Ohio, the Southern Air bankruptcy and aircraft registered to companies associated with Wexner or Epstein. The available evidence has not established that those later corporate aircraft were the physical airplanes used in the 1986 Contra resupply flights.
The map makes geographic distinctions that are lost when several flights, companies and aircraft are treated as one network. Select a record to examine its documentary status.
These featured records demonstrate different levels of evidence. A photograph may establish an airframe’s presence in a fleet while leaving its mission unknown. Open any record for its specific unresolved documentary needs.
The directory preserves the source-ledger identifiers, including provisional, conflicting and unassigned entries. Evidence grades refer to the assertion described, rather than certifying every historical registration.
| Ledger ID | Aircraft and record | Research population | Evidence level |
|---|
No records meet these filters.
Aircraft, corporations and government contracting arrangements recur across decades. Each chronology row is linked to the kind of source that supports it.
Period reporting, a described aircraft-purchase check and later sworn FBI testimony do not establish the same legal relationship. Original FAA title, payment instruments and service contracts are needed to separate ownership from maintenance and operation.
Senate testimony ↗The Ilopango–Aguacate weapons flight appears in a federal judicial opinion, but the court record as examined does not identify a specific L-100 serial. SAT L-100 fleet photographs are relevant leads and cannot close this gap.
Court opinion ↗Southern Air’s October 4 LOGAIR L-382G crash at Kelly AFB and the October 5 N4410F shootdown in Nicaragua are separate events. Shared aviation history does not combine them into one aircraft, cargo movement or investigation.
NTSB report ↗Contemporary reporting describes 1995 Hong Kong–Columbus freight plans. Carrier movement statistics, The Limited’s actual airwaybills, aircraft serials and remittance records would be needed to establish individual consignments.
Industry report ↗N193LA, N199LA and N908JE recur across multiple physical aircraft and dates. Each owner or operator must be paired with the manufacturer serial and the valid historical registration period.
Current FAA registry ↗Southern Air Transport’s 1998 bankruptcy and later Southern Air Inc corporate history cannot be merged by name. Asset-transfer instruments and allowed creditor claims remain distinct from cash received by a particular person or business.
Bankruptcy court source ↗The gateways below identify which proposition each document can support. Several original records remain inaccessible or have been examined only as indexed excerpts; those limitations are disclosed in their cards.
Certified historic FAA title records for the C-123 and SAFAIR L-100, the executed 1973 CIA divestiture transaction, individual 1995 freight waybills, original 1998 SAT bankruptcy asset schedules and disbursement reports, and state records establishing the actual disposition of Ohio incentives remain open. No completion claim has been assigned to them.
The 134-pass master research record and historic source register remain private. This public-facing Atlas extracts documented distinctions; it does not replace the underlying private evidentiary file.