Originally Posted by
Air Snoop
Having interviewed many folk who have witnessed aircraft accidents, it is not unusual to get the sequence of events in the wrong order or to misinterpret what they are seeing. It is a very traumatic experience for them.
I agree completely, the most relevant aspect of the eyewitness accounts is the consistency in believe that the engines sounded wrong. Aural memory is much stronger and more consistently correct then visual memory. That doesn't mean in anyway that anything was actually wrong with the engines just that the sound was different. The airplane was significantly lower than normal and moving at significantly higher speed so the acoustic signature for lack of a better term would be much much different then they would expect and is what they noticed before even acquiring the aircraft visually I'd wager....