Although normally, passenger observations of a system abnormality will be incorrect however they may not be. I try to remember that the pax are part of my "resources" (CRM) and their input may be just as important as a crewmembers. On top of that, you never know the background of your passenger...pilot, engineer, manufacturers rep, FAA. They may have some valid input so ignoring them and hoping that they go away is probably not the wisest move.

Three years after USAF retirement, I was a passenger on a C-141 flying between Kwajalein and Hickam AFB. Invited to the cockpit, I sat in the jump seat and listened to the crew explain how the aircraft worked, "This is the autopilot; it . . . "etc, etc. After fifteen minutes of entertainment, the Aircraft Commannder asked if I had any questions. Only one, I said. "Do you always leave the continuous ignition on in cruise when there is no turbulence ?" (Cruise check list item) It got quiet with a few red faces.:o

We then spend an hour telling fairy tales, lies and war stories about C-141 flying. :)

Pax saved me from having to declare an emergency and rollin the trucks.
When calling to FA to see if she was ready for T/O she said a passenger made her promise that she would tell us fluid was pouring out the #1 on the Dash 8. The Fluid level was still ok but we remembered we had it filled before push. So we watched it for a min and sure enough we were bleeding somthing fierce.

To this day, those damn pumps still catch my attention...far worse than the "main gear bombs" on the CRJ-200.

That always brought a grin to my face. It's pretty funny to watch pax reactions when the gear comes down, often their eyes become as wide as dinner plates or when they were sleeping and awoken by it saying "what the hell was that?"

The 320 hyrdraulic pumps sound like a cheap hotel room:)

I sleep through everything when i'm in the back so who cares what they ask...

I still remember vividly one Pax question to me after we landed in IAH. We had just pulled up to the gate and #1 was shut down. As the Pax were deplaning, we had one guy come up to me (I was standing in the galley with the FA) and say "you might want to have that left engine checked out". I replied with "why would you say that sir?" ... his response almost made me laugh uncontrollably. "Well sir, as we were coming in on short final I noticed some gyroscopic precision on that prop out there". I could just hear the captain laughing hysterically up front, and all I could get out of my mouth without laughing was "ok, sir, we'll check on that".

Had a passenger while deadheading yell, almost at the top of his lungs, "RIGHT RUDDER" every time we hit a bump. I just kept telling myself; hitting passengers is bad...

Gyroscopic precession is no laughing matter, I would have expected a little more professionalism from you...

whenever I have a bad landing, I say damn P-factor.