JV,
In aswer to your question "what makes you report a flight through heavy turbulence (and a hard landing)? Your personal perception, cabin crew reports, sinkrate, looking into aircraft data yourself...?"
I always used to use myself and advise the following to my colleagues:-
If on a subsequent flight the aircraft suffered structural damage and hurt /killed someone because you had failed to notify maintenance personnel of an event on your own flight you would not be able to sleep at night and may not be able to live with yourself afterwards. ALWAYS tell it how YOU see it as the commander. It is subjective I know, but there you are. Of course the commander should use his/her professional judgement from all sources - reports from other crew as well as electronic sensors. He/she is far better placed than maintenance personnel to make this judgement purely from the fact that they were there at the time.
Incidently this thought process applies to more than turbulence and heavy landings.
Last edited by Oldy; 27th August 2006 at 20:56.