This has got to be a troll. I have trouble believing you are being serious saying things like this.

That we can calculate the distance to a lightning to great accuracy (my example in the very first sentence) by accounting for a finite speed of sound only and assuming an infinite speed of light? Yeah, I'm pretty serious that we can neglect that error of some microseconds when concerned with a process that takes many orders of magnitude more.

> " These statements exhibit a fundamental misunderstanding of the phenomenon. It's not that the sound outpaces the aircraft. It's that light from the aircraft (reflected or transmitted, e.g., by landing / navigational lights) travels faster than sound."

Explain to me again how any of that explains why the airplane passes me (and I see it 1e-6s later which seems to be somehow super important to you) before I hear it, even though its sound is traveling towards me much faster than the plane.

You're demonstrating Wiio's Law.

Seems to cut either way.