You could use a combination of VLOOKUP and MATCH. Something like:
=VLOOKUP(A8,$A$1:$E$4,MATCH(B8,$A$1:$E$1,0),FALSE)
where A8 holds the value of the row you're interested in (aircraft reg in your case), B8 holds the column you're interested in (operation in your case), $A$1:$E$4 is the entire table and $A$1:$E$1 is the row of column headings. The idea is that MATCH is used to select the column for VLOOKUP.
Hope this helps