Southern Air Transport

Southern Air Transport (SAT), based in Miami, Florida, 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 1965 onward, such airlines were charter carriers. Up until 1965, they were charter/scheduled hybrids. For much of that time the carrier was owned by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) (1960–1973).

The carrier was also known for its role in the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s, during which SAT transported arms to Iran and to the US-backed mercenary army in Central America known as the Contras, which were fighting the revolutionary Sandinista government in Nicaragua.