Capt Fathom:
What exactly has been witnessed here? Would someone sitting in the passenger cabin have all the facts, or just mere speculation.
That is for the investigation to establish.
DirectAnywhere:
Aircraft, any RPT crew would have self reported for one of two reasons:
1. Professionalism, or
2. they would know it would come up on the QAR anyway.
That "professionalism" would extend to encouraging a member of the public to report such a serious safety incident wouldn't it?
Why would it come up on the QAR? I understand that the various recording devices on the aircraft would have recorded the raw data, but would the existence (alone) of that data be enough to ring alarm bells?
If I had been that passenger I would not be able to sleep at night until I had reported it.