
The breath-taking moment that an anti-ballistic missile was launched into the night sky has been caught on camera by a stunned pilot, who described it as a 'once in a lifetime event'.

Dutch Pilot Christiaan van Heijst, 34, cannot resist pulling his camera out whenever possible in the cockpit of a Boeing 747-8 Freighter.

He took these breath-taking photos during a flight from Hong Kong to Baku in Azerbaijan on Sunday on an airway heading over the Himalayas.

The breath-taking moment that an anti-ballistic missile was launched into the night sky has been caught on camera by a stunned pilot

Dutch Pilot Christiaan van Heijst, 34, cannot resist pulling his camera out whenever possible in the cockpit of a Boeing 747-8 Freighter. He took these breath-taking photos during a flight from Hong Kong to Baku in Azerbaijan on Sunday on an airway heading over the Himalayas

Van Heijst's freighter aircraft was flying at over 32,000 feet when the missile blasted past overhead

The plane was flying at 32,100ft roughly one hour after the sun had set below the horizon when an alarming bright blast erupted.

Christiaan said: 'Suddenly we noticed a very bright spot on the horizon that rapidly grew in size and altitude.

'It looked like a balloon or strange cloud at first, but a few seconds later I recognised it as the contrail of a rocket or missile that was shot up in the sky.

'I have seen it many times before on video and photos, and noticed the typical speed and characteristics of such a trail.

Christiaan said: 'Suddenly we noticed a very bright spot on the horizon that rapidly grew in size and altitude. 'It looked like a balloon or strange cloud at first, but a few seconds later I recognised it as the contrail of a rocket or missile that was shot up in the sky'

Van Heijst explained that as far as he knew, their aircraft was the only one in the vicinity at the time

The image on the left shows the second stage of the rocket igniting, with the picture on the right capturing the contrail of the high altitude missile

'Roughly one minute later I noticed the first balloon was still growing but seemed to be rounded off on the top while a second contrail started just above the first one.

'I figured this was the second stage of a rocket igniting and this confirmed my idea that we were witnessing a very powerful missile being launched.

'We knew certain parts of the Chinese airspace north and south of our route were closed but no details were given to us and we were not informed there was supposed to be missile launch so the event took us by surprise.

Van Heijst has taken hundreds of stunning images from cockpits - but this was one of the most surprising, and alarming

The missile was launched from a restricted area to the north of Van Heijst's flight path

The flight crew gaze at the missile launch on the horizon as their plane makes its way to Azerbaijan

'The airway and airspace where we flew was open and also the air traffic control gave us no prior warning.

'Later I found out that it was a Chinese test for an anti-ballistic missile system they are creating which are basically missiles to shoot other missiles out of the sky.

'Also, I learned that the restricted area north of our route was the launch site and the restricted areas south of our route were the places where the debris was expected to fall back to earth.

'The rocket basically flew right over us at very high altitude. For as far as we know, we were one of the very few - if not only - aircraft to fly there at that time. It was a once in a lifetime event.'