Are we really going to pretend that the average pilot can see a fast moving fighter jet, be able to decipher what flight path he is on, and what the maneuvering that would be needed to avoid hitting him? I have to say in the FLs that traffic at 1,000 ft above from a certain distance, it looks visually like he's at our height. It's only as it gets closer that discerning comes easier. Your writeup in that post is pretty good, but the only reasonable conclusion I can come to is that it's a paper exercise to say the plane was "visible" for 40 seconds prior to impact, and with clouds and shadows, really only 10 seconds prior to impact? What are the chances that in those particular 10 seconds, the crew just happened to be scanning that sliver of airspace? For all we know, the DC9 crew's heads could have been on a swivel, but in those last seconds, they were scanning another part of the sky, after having glanced at the area the fighter jet came from (at a moment when it was too far for the naked eye to see). That's why I'm tired of accident reports that write off the probably cause as failure to see and avoid for a midair collision. It doesn't do justice.
No different than the Excelaire and GOL collision. Head on, it would have been a speck until the last ~10 seconds or so. And even then, it may very well have been a "hey, is that a speck on the windshield?" "Let me see my TCAS, I don't see any planes on it this high" No. Look out again. Collision. Of course it didn't happen that way, neither crew had any clue about each other.
