Southern Air Transport

Common card · No. 493954

Southern Air Transport (SAT), based in Miami, Florida, United States, was, in its final incarnation, a cargo airline. However, it started life as an irregular air carrier (later known as a supplemental air carrier), a type of carrier defined and tightly controlled until 1978 by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), a now defunct Federal agency that, at the time, closely regulated almost all US commercial air transportation. From 1960 to 1973, the small carrier was secretly owned by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which used it to support its activities primarily in Southeast Asia connected with the Vietnam war, though SAT continued to function in other regards as a normal charter airline. During this period, SAT was part of a complex of CIA-owned carriers, including Air America and Intermountain Aviation. Having no further use of the carrier, the CIA decided to sell it in the early 1970s, but its ownership leaked in what became a storm of controversy. The carrier was also known for...

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