[likeabbas]

Pilots, both commercial and military, are constantly under scrutiny to maintain a healthy mental state for fear of their license being revoked. You can not be mentally unstable and be a pilot. For years it was generally well accepted that people who believed in UFOs are crazy, so pilots have kept this to themselves for fear of retribution. Go ask any pilot how they would feel reporting something moving in unexplainable ways right up against their aircraft.

[viraptor]

That's why I said evidence. I'm not expecting them to tell tales of UFO sightings. Having a video of something does not reflect on your mental state (unless you faked it). This issue also doesn't apply to passengers and there's lots of people in the sky who don't have a pilot's licence to protect.

[likeabbas]

Most planes aren’t equipped with any camera systems. The videos commercial pilots and passengers use are their phones which have trouble focusing on objects half a mile away (which is very close for an aircraft to be next to another one but very far for your phone to focus on).

Military pilots do have camera systems like the ATFLIR pods on F-18s but the pentagon only declassifies those videos when it’s useful - like when the Chinese jet made an American military plan fly through its fumes recently

[viraptor]

Blurry photos do not stop people from posting them in many other cases. Planes do not have to be equipped as such: there's so many people flying with GoPro-s and similar recording all the time that we'd get something popping up all the time.

And that's even if we ignore the claim that people repeatedly see something. If I was a pilot and spotted something weird more than once, I'd make sure I record every flight from then on - can't imagine not doing it.

[likeabbas]

Well, here’s some of the most interesting videos I’ve seen taken by people.

* https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/13dmaif/black_triangl...

* https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/12kaed7/2010_ufo_that...

* https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/t4smpl/flyby_uap_foot...

* https://imgur.io/a/seWVHB6

I’ve done some basic research and can attest none of these are at least CGI made. Some of these predate photoshop. The issue with all of these videos are they are hard to prove definitively without corroborating sensor data. But they are interesting none the less.

[viraptor]

Yup, that's exactly what I meant. Those are worth analysing and talking about. I'd be glad if there were even fewer barriers to reporting those. But it also proves the barriers are not that big and a bit of an excuse.

[likeabbas]

There is actually still a barrier both militarily and commercially until. The military still has mostly no formal structure for UAP reporting. AARO is working to set that up but only has a portion of the Naval Air Force set up and not any other branch. Commercially, there is nothing. I believe congressmen are writing a law that requires the reporting of UAP by commercial airliners but that won't go into effect until at least mid next year. So while pilots may have this data, they don't have a formal way to report it other than showing it to a buddy.

I hope this gets resolved soon, but I also hope this data doesn't become immediately classified.