The person who posted this question is already thinking the right way. They know an IF formula alone won't scale across five plane types and multiple tail numbers, and they have already glimpsed the better solution: a separate lookup sheet. That instinct is worth more than a dozen formulas typed in desperation. The gap here is not ambition, it is simply the right tool for the job.
What this user needs is not more nested IF statements. It is a VLOOKUP or, better yet, an XLOOKUP. The logic is straightforward: build a small reference table on a second sheet with every tail number in one column and its corresponding plane type in the next. Then, in the logbook column where the type should appear, write a formula that says, in plain terms: "Look at this tail number, find it in the reference table, and return the type from the cell next to it." That is it. No complex logic, no cascading IFs, no manual typing of each association. The reference table is easy to maintain: add a new tail number, update the formula range, and every existing entry stays correct.
But there is a larger lesson here. Spreadsheets are powerful, but they are also brittle. Every manual data entry point is a risk, and every hard-coded value is a future error waiting to happen. This user's request, linking a tail number to a plane type, is exactly the kind of repetitive, pattern-based task that spreadsheet software handles poorly at scale. It works for five plane types and fifteen tail numbers. It becomes a maintenance burden at fifty. And that is where the conversation should shift.
The real solution for someone managing aircraft data is not a better lookup formula. It is a data environment where relationships between entities are native, not patched together with duct tape and VLOOKUPs. An AI-native spreadsheet can understand that a tail number implies a plane type because it already knows the connection. It can surface that data without the user building a reference table, writing a formula, or maintaining a second sheet. The user types the tail number, and the type appears because the tool understands the domain. That is the future this question points toward.
For now, the immediate answer is XLOOKUP on a reference sheet. But the better takeaway is this: if you find yourself building lookup tables by hand, you have already discovered the limit of your current tool. The next step is not a better formula, it is a spreadsheet that works the way you think, so you can stop thinking about the formula altogether.