The inscription on this bag may not mean much to most, but the P.A.A. stands for Pan American Airways, and Mark S. Pyle was the captain of the last Pan Am flight operated by the original airline - a 727 flight from Barbados to Miami on Clipper Goodwill. A pilot named Scott Gallardo spotted it in a thrift store in Kansas City, and used it until his employer replaced paper charts with iPads. It’s been donated to the Pan Am Museum (it’s housed at the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island).
Capt. Pyle wrote about the last trip - the story is well worth reading:
It was originally in the Miami Herald and the ALPA magazine, and the final paragraph in the article was somehow omitted from the version above:
Upon returning to my home, our 13-year old son presented me with a letter. Through his own tears, he named me Pan Am’s greatest pilot. For one brief moment, on one tearful occasion, I was.
Link to the Facebook post below: