I agree. They mentioned that there was video taken.Maybe they can judge the height and distance of the plane from the video.
Perhaps ... lots of angles and vectors to calculate ... bottom line is: are they out to get the pilots or not ...
It’s easy enough to do if you have the algebraic skills (I don’t). All that is necessary is one shot where the aircraft and an element of the background, such as a stadium scoreboard are in the same frame. Since the dimensions of both are fixed, the distance between them can be calculated.
The reason I know that is because when I was in the Navy at Yokosuka, we used to have a problem with TV news helicopters buzzing the ships and subs arriving to get good shots — sometimes flying directly over them — and generally acting like idiots.
But if we could get a single shot of the helo and any part of the ship (radar mast or periscope) some ensign or jg with coke bottle glasses would peer in a couple books, spend a few minutes scribbling arcane formula on legal pad and then tell us exactly how far away the helo was when the shot was taken.
Always amazed me...