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It would be quite interesting to be able to quantify in more detail to what degree (or if) pilots perceptions are any more accurate than those without any type of aviation experience (i.e. would a subset of observers who have some degree of aviation expertise show a smaller variance in observed characteristics of an incident, compared to a subset of observers who do not). You mentioned some anecdotal cases where pilots were unable to correctly identify certain aspects of an incident, but such observers are much rarer most of the time. I wonder if incidents that occur near airports would be more likely to have more such witnesses to form a better sample.

The other factor I wonder about with respect to the AA587 incident is whether there would be any correlation between variability of reports and the amount of time between the event and when the interview was conducted. One intuitively would think that the longer the time, the greater the amount of potential contamination from various sources. That you would imagine would be that much more the case for a case like AA587, where the amount of media attention and the high profile nature of the event probably couldn’t be higher.