Figured it out...
So you go in and create a custom dogfight match up by creating one or more spawn locations (red and/or blue) and then save the match and away you go right?
Except no planes are on the aircraft list. So the game has a error trapping procedure that says that if the homebase has no aircraft then default to ALL available aircraft regardless of player flyable status. Online we use a variation of this trick by manually entering (using Notepad) additional AI aircraft that are either flyable from external views or flyable through HSFX. One additional trick is that a flyable aircraft has to be chosen first and then the AI type is selected. We've been using that one for 7-8 years now
Simple solution is to edit the plane list for the homebase by selecting all of the aircraft and moving them over to the right side so that they are flyable. You will avoid this problem in the future.