Have you ever wondered why airplane pilots all carry the same black, very square bag and what the contents are inside? Whenver I see a pilot totting one around, I wonder about this and finally last night as I got off a plane in Manchester, NH I asked.

The pilot seemed thrilled to show me the contents of his mysterious black bag and tell me why all pilots use them. They are not “forced” to own them nor are they given the bag when done with the air force academy or pilot school (or wherever else they learn to fly) which is what I thought, but it is mere custom and functionality which guides them all to have this very rugged looking balck bag of mystery. Basically it holds all these manuals and charts, which are handy I guess for piloting a plane (there were about 4 or 5 of them), and they are thick sqaure manuals that would not fit in an ordinary briefcase, but they fit pretty much perfectly in this bag. Indeed, he even offered to tell me where I could order such a bag (which I declined) although I thought it would be amsuing to have one while traveling through the major airports of America. Sort of as a means to catch the attention of pilots which seem to be so stoic, strong, tall, and composed compared to us mortals who have no idea how to pilot some large hunk of steel into the sky.

But simply asking him a question about the bag shot that image of the pilot right out of the roof and instantly revealed the nature of this great mystery (at least for me.)