The Kaikōura lights: radar-visual sightings, airliner reports and filmed lights over New Zealand, 1978–79 (1978)
Cargo aircraft crews, air traffic control radar and a television crew filming aboard a Safe Air Argosy reported lights tracking their plane near Kaikōura on 30–31 December 1978. New Zealand's Defence Ministry attributed them to squid-boat lights, meteors and Venus; analysts still disagree.
- Case number
- TU-1978-900001
- Date
- 30 December 1978
- Location
- Kaikōura, Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand
- Coordinates
- 42.400° S, 173.680° E
- Shape
- light
- Colour
- Unknown
- Witnesses
- 7
- Status
- likely explained
Case summary
The first Kaikōura lights reports came on 21 December 1978, when Safe Air pilots Vern Powell and Ian Pirie reported strange lights around their Argosy cargo aircraft, with Wellington air traffic control reportedly tracking corresponding radar returns. The best-documented episode was late on 30 December, when a Melbourne Channel 0 television crew — reporter Quentin Fogarty, cameraman David Crockett and Crockett's wife Ngaire — joined a midnight newspaper run with pilots Bill Startup and Bob Guard. The five reported lights on the flight deck for many minutes; Startup described a huge, bright white light with a red tinge that tracked the aircraft. On the return leg a line of five small lights and a large orb reportedly tracked the wingtip for about 15 minutes and was filmed on 16 mm film.
The Royal New Zealand Air Force, police and the Carter Observatory investigated. The Defence Ministry attributed the sightings to squid-fishing boat lights reflected off clouds, unburnt meteors, Venus, or trains and cars. The DSIR, briefing the United Nations in January 1979, dismissed Crockett's film as window distortion it could reproduce with a torch but kept the objects classed as 'UFOs until identified'.
Physicist Bruce Maccabee concluded the filmed object was extremely bright and around 20 metres across; DSIR scientist William Ireland countered in 2000 that the film showed rows of lights matching squid-boat lamp rigs. The radar returns have never been matched to any single explanation.
Nearby strategic sites
- Pine Gap Joint Defence Facility — 4204 km away