Hiding (not eliminating) duplicates in ColdFusion array - coldfusion

Question

We have a three-panel display in which Panel One shows a list of countries, Panel Two shows a list of organizations, and Panel Three shows a list of aircraft. If you click a country, both the organizations and aircraft are filtered by that country, using IDs for each.
This is all working fine, but the list of aircraft comes from a "linking table" -- each record contains aircraft ID and name, and operator ID and name. Any given type of aircraft can be listed multiple times, depending on how many organizations operate it. For example, "AW159 Wildcat" is listed twice, once for Army Air Corps and once for Royal Navy. The way it works right now, "AW159" is listed in Panel Three twice when the page initially loads.
I would like any given aircraft to be displayed only once on initial page load, regardless of how many times it may be listed in this linking table. But, I want all the "duplicates" available to be shown, if somebody filters on the operating organization.
Is there a way to loop over all the aircraft but somehow hide duplicates of aircraft ID? Or, might there be a larger problem with the way our database is designed? I am open to suggestions. Thank you all very much in advance!
EDIT: sorry for not posting code; here is some. Thanks everybody for all of your help!
1. Query and array population in cfc:
<cfquery name="queryByOperator" datasource="vertipedia">
SELECT view_aircraftbyoperators.aircraftID
, view_aircraftbyoperators.Aircraft
, view_aircraftbyoperators.operatorID
, view_aircraftbyoperators.Operator
, tbl_companies.country
, tbl_companies.companyShortName
FROM view_aircraftbyoperators JOIN tbl_companies
ON tbl_companies.ID = view_aircraftbyoperators.operatorID
ORDER BY Aircraft
</cfquery>
<cfset count = 1>
<cfset aircraftByOperator = arrayNew(2)>
<cfloop query="queryByOperator">
<cfset aircraftByOperator[count][1] = aircraftID>
<cfset aircraftByOperator[count][2] = Aircraft>
<cfset aircraftByOperator[count][3] = operatorID>
<cfset aircraftByOperator[count][4] = Operator>
<cfset aircraftByOperator[count][5] = country>
<cfset count = count+1>
</cfloop>
2. Outputting on page:
<ul>
<cfloop from="1" to="#ArrayLen(aircraftByOperator)#" index="i">
<cfoutput>
<li name="#aircraftByOperator[i][3]#" class="#aircraftByOperator[i][5]#">
<p>
#aircraftByOperator[i][2]#
</p>
</li>
</cfoutput>
</cfloop>
</ul>
[i][1], [i][3] and [i][5] are all IDs. "operatorID" is the one that will change depending on who operates the aircraft. I hope this helps explain what I am trying, and again, many thanks!

Answer 1

Dan Bracuk's comment "Does this mean you are pre-loading all your data into javascript? It might be more efficient to throw some ajax in there and just get what you need when you need it" ended up being the way to go for us. I would like to mark his comment as the answer, but am unable to see how to do that.
For others who may read this post, we
Loaded all of the aircraft initially
When a visitor filters by country and/or organization, a new query is sent via ajax
I was having a hard time formatting the returned data, so I used jQuery's load() to format it and drop it in the proper place in the output panel.
As Dan said, it is very fast and much easier to work with, especially as our database continues to grow.
Thanks Dan!