The pilots were adamant that what they were looking at were not satellites and, more specifically, that they were not Starlink satellites. They knew this because they had seen Starlink satellites, and this looked nothing like what they had seen.
The pilots were not entirely wrong. Starlink is a constellation of thousands of low-orbit satellites that are designed to provide internet connections to remote areas. The satellites are launched in groups of fifty or more, and the groups are deployed all at the same time. For a time, before they reach their final orbits, the satellites circle Earth in a “train” that, from the ground and illuminated by the sun, looks like a long string (or train) of bright lights (see Figure 2).