New Zealand Film Crew Encounter 1978

On December 31, 1978, an Australian Channel 0 television film crew aboard a Safe Air cargo aircraft off the coast of Kaikoura, New Zealand filmed sixteen minutes of 16mm color footage of unidentified luminous objects accompanying the aircraft. The footage was analyzed by scientists from the Royal New Zealand Air Force, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Ground Saucer Watch, and multiple universities. The JPL analysis concluded the objects were 'not stars, planets, meteors, reflections, or searchlights' and that the films showed real physical objects of unknown type. The RNZAF radar at Wellington tracked anomalous contacts corresponding to the visual sightings. The New Zealand government subsequently released its military UAP files in 2010 — the first such release by an Asia-Pacific government — and the Kaikoura footage remained the centerpiece. The sixteen minutes of authenticated professional footage remains one of the most carefully analyzed and least explained UAP photographic records in any government's archive.