Wouldn't it just be a matter of choose map, create arena, invite buddies?
Wiley.
If you wanted to get a little fancier, you could have some custom Staged Missions to combine with your Custom Arena that would allow the Host to populate his friends into the mission slots.
The advantage is that the mission could air-spawn all the players at a designed alt, speed, direction, and plane choice, all at once. And restart again easily when desired. No one but the Host has to do anything. The Host would run the show.
Hmmm in fact as a quick test, if you could find 8 players, you could try it with one of the 4x4 missions/terrains I created. Those are dissimilar aircraft, but others could easily be made to order with all same AC. Also 2v2 or 1v1. No AI need be involved if you fill all slots.
Refer to :
https://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,397942.0.html to see how you would setup and run that.
$0.02.
[edit]
Just tried it, but the downside currently is that once you've killed the mission it unloads, you have to reload/populate it again.
Now if Hitech just added a "Replay" button instead of "Kill" that would reset everything back to the start with all the same settings and population assignment it would be perfect.