I’m not a pilot, but have trouble understanding why someone with the qualifications to fly for Air Canada could have made this mistake. Don’t commercial pilots receive any kind of “situational awareness” training for bright astronomical objects? What about the man’s own years of experience? Yes, Venus is bright right now, but surely he has seen planets before. Didn’t he notice Venus pretty much in the same patch of sky last week or last month? It doesn’t move *that* fast.
If pilots are trained never to look at anything but their own instruments, why give them windows in the first place?