Possibly, although it strikes me as possible that being a pilot doesn’t make you necessarily supercompetent where observing unfamiliar phenomena is concerned.

Possibly, although it strikes me as possible that being a pilot doesn’t make you necessarily supercompetent where observing unfamiliar phenomena is concerned. Pilots are trained for a specific, if comprehensive, set of circumstances, and things like death spirals occur because even that training can fail. Pilots, ground crew, flight controllers and so on, are not magically reliable. That said, it could be exactly as reported, but it might not be.