Anybody else seen something like this?
Yes, probably 15-20 years ago
Westbound longhaul flight, Night, east of Baikonur but not by much,.... No heads up from ATC. Launched from just right of our 12 o'clock, appeared to travel up windscreen and over the top into our very high three o'clock...watched it past staging...several other aircraft in the area will have seen similar. Another company aircraft had similar happen a few months before and I guess it must have happened many times since.
With the benefit of hindsight and the web turned out what we saw was a "Soyuz" basic launcher with an early varient Fregat upper stage...and we reckon we were within 200km of the launch site....no idea of what the range safety area was in terms of "splay"...but if it had gone wrong we were certainly well placed for a h*** of a view...it was spectacular enough as it was..