Qantas Flight 363 and the Seven Contrails over the Tasman Sea

January 1965. New Zealand was already hearing about strange things in the sky. On January 3, a family in Napier sent a report to the RNZAF. On January 7, at Harewood in Christchurch, witnesses described a circular object with a "blue centre and a gold-coloured ring" and a "humming noise like that from a spinning top." Then came a report from an airliner crew over open sea.

Wednesday, January 13, 1965. 0845 GMT. That was 8.45 pm in New Zealand, 6.45 pm in Sydney. Shortly after sunset. Qantas flight 363, a Lockheed L-188 Electra turboprop, was bound for Sydney. The official file puts it at 41°S 167°E, "Course 275 degrees' mag at 20,000 feet." Newspapers placed it about 250 miles off the New Zealand coast, over the Tasman Sea.

To the north-west, high above them, a single vapour trail appeared. It was moving east, toward New Zealand. The crew put it at about 35,000ft. Then, while Captain D. Shannon and the flight crew watched, it divided. The crew report reads: "Single vapour trail appeared to north west travelling east…became seven distinct contrails apparently made by large aircraft in loose formation…" Wire reports described a V formation at about 45,000 feet. Shannon was adamant they were not birds.

The second pilot had a story of his own. That morning, on the Sydney to Wellington flight near longitude 166E, he had noticed what he considered "eleven ships in group on his radar screen."

The objects were in New Zealand's area, so the RNZAF took the lead. Wing Commander A.F. Tucker, Deputy Director of Operations, said: "The sighting was reported by an experienced aircrew and made sincerely. We must take it seriously." The RAAF assisted. One of its officers said: "They were not RAAF aircraft, and we do not know the country of origin." Press reports said the objects had been plotted on radar, and the Civil Aviation Department reportedly logged them as UFOs.

The official file tells a different story. "RNZAF-radars at Wellington and Ohakea had nothing at height within 15-200mls." Only "angels," spurious echoes, south of Wellington. A search by aircraft on January 14 found nothing, except "an unusually large number of high density cloud radar contacts." A copy was passed to the US Air Attaché.

On January 15, Air Commodore T.F. Gill, Deputy Chief of the NZ Air Staff, named the most likely cause: "ice crystals in high cirrus cloud, caught by sunlight." Just after sunset, high cloud would still catch the light. A Civil Aviation Department spokesman suggested "cloud formations caused by high winds at a considerable altitude."

The RAAF first suggested birds. One account says it then moved to "possibly service aircraft, capable of high-speed and long-range performance." Another says it ended up satisfied the objects were birds. The editors of UFOCUS NZ were unimpressed: "What, at 45,000ft? Not likely!" After about a week, the RNZAF regarded the incident as closed unless new evidence appeared.

George D. Fawcett wrote about it in Flying Saucers magazine in August 1965, and Jim Johnson's chronology cites NICAP's UFO Investigator. Later retellings said the objects "paced" the Electra and were confirmed by multiple radar units. The 1965 sources say neither. The trails flew east while the airliner flew west.

The case survives through UFOCUS NZ and the Project 1947 catalogue of Australian government records. The full RAAF file, 580/1/1 part 4, still waits in the National Archives of Australia. Set beside the Kaikōura lights of 1978, it remains one of the quieter airliner puzzles of the region.