So you have a sheet where all your aircrafts are registered. And another sheet, where you want to register the number of hours per flight.
As start, define the datarange in column A of aircraft list (e.g. A2:A11) as Named Range (this is needed so you can define Data Validation List for selecting aircrafts on your 1st sheet (let's refer to it as Flights);
In Flight sheet, you need a table where you register all flights for all your aircrafts - i.e. you need there a table like:
Column A - FlightDate (an optional field for you, but may be very useful), Column B - Aircraft, Column C - FlownHrs, ... ;
For datarange in column Aircraft (table fields below header) in Flights sheet you define a Data Validation List which refers to Named Range you defined based on Aircrafts in aircraft list. This allows you to select any of registered aircrafts;
Now, to register a flight, you enter a new row of data into Flights table: Optionally entering Flight date (btw, there exists an Excel shortcut to enter current date), select the aircraft from Data Validation List, and enter the Flight time;
On aircrafts Table you have a column A for aircrafts, column B for their name, and column (C) for accumulated hours. Let's assume your datarange there starts from row 2 (row 1 are table headers). Into C2 enter the formula like
Code:
=SUMIFS(Flights!$C$2:$C$100,Flights!$B$2:$B$100,$A2)
, and copy the formula down. For every aircraft, the total flight hours are calculated.
As start, you can simply create an empty Flights table, and start to fill it. When the end of table will be near, you simply add new empty rows into table (my advise is, add those empty rows not below existing ones - unless you use Defined Table, but e.g. before the current last row - then there is quite a good chance, that your formulas will be updated automatically to take new rows into account).
About the bonuses the flight date will give you - with this date present, you can p.e. design reports, where flight hours for every aircraft for selected time interval (e.g. for selected year, or for selected month of certain year) are returned.