John Marsh wrote
Collective suggestibility? You were all listening in to the excited comments.
Were you perhaps looking too intensely at celestial objects in the dark, thus making them appear to move about?
Most definitely not! I have been flying the atlantic for 34 years and have never seen anything unusual. However on 17th Nov 2022 I was eastbound and between 40 West and 30 West I saw things I have never seen before.
There were a couple of objects moving which were clearly not aircraft and may well have been satellites. Not very unusual. However then there was a bright light similar to Venus (but not Venus which I have seen hundreds of times) but more like an aircraft head on with its landing lights on, except it suddenly went sideways at great speed for 10 seconds but then reversed its direction.
That disappeared but a few minutes later there was another not so well lit object with another similar one visible. These two then moved very fast in the same direction but not in sufficient formation to be a reflection and then one reversed direction and then after a pause the other changed its direction and followed slowly catching it up.
About this time an American accented voice on 123.45 said "Is anyone else seeing some very strange lights in the sky around 40 West?" Several other voices joined the conversation and there was then a discussion and someone suggested Elon Musk's Starling satellites. However everyone agreed they could not have changed direction like that.