Kaikoura UFO Incident Television Broadcast Footage
Type: Video Evidence
Source: New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (NZBC)
Archived television news footage capturing aerial lights during the Kaikoura UFO incident, including commentary and visual confirmation of the phenomena alongside aircraft operations. (see related videos in the Kaikoura Lights UFO Incident case file)
The 1978 Kaikoura Lights TV news footage is one of the world's most famous pieces of UFO media, captured on 16mm colour film by a professional television crew in New Zealand. The iconic footage shows bright, morphing, and pulsating lights tracking a cargo aircraft, an event backed up by simultaneous military and civilian radar detections.
How the Footage Was CapturedThe Date: Shortly after midnight on December 30, 1978.
The Flight: A Safe Air Argosy freight plane flying from Wellington to Christchurch.
The Crew: Reporter Quentin Fogarty from Melbourne's Channel 0, freelance cameraman David Crockett, and sound recordist Ngaire Crockett.
The Event: The news crew boarded the flight to film a reenactment of a prior UFO sighting from December 21. Instead, actual mysterious lights appeared and began trailing their aircraft. Pilots Bill Startup and Bob Guard alerted the crew, allowing Crockett to film the objects directly from the flight deck.
Key Details in the Footage & RadarVisual Appearance: The film captured bright white lights with distinct red tinges that changed size, hovered, and accelerated. One object filmed left an unexplainable ampersand-shaped trail.
Radar Confirmation: Air traffic controllers at Wellington confirmed that a target appeared on radar exactly one mile behind the plane, matching the crew's visual line of sight.
Archived Records: The historical television material and interviews are preserved in archives such as the New Zealand audiovisual repository, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision.
Official Government InvestigationDeclassified Documents: New Zealand military files declassified in 2010 revealed that the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) struggled to debunk the TV1 and Channel 0 footage.
The Official Verdict: While official reports tentatively blamed the planet Venus, rising celestial bodies (like Jupiter), or powerful light reflections from local squid fishing boats, scientists conceded these could not fully explain the fast-moving, anomalous radar tracking. The incident officially remains categorized as "unidentified"
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