Something moving fast enough over NZ to create a sonic boom. Qantas doubts its aircraft is responsible.
The organisation that controls the airspace, Airways New Zealand, said none of their control towers reported seeing a meteor and none were reported to Airways by pilots within New Zealand airspace.
Canterbury 'meteor' may have actually been a plane
30 August 2018
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/travel/2018/08/canterbury-meteor-may-have-actually-been-a-qantas-plane.html
"The contrail pictured does not look like it was produced by an aircraft, and passenger jets do not fly at speeds fast enough to create a sonic boom," a spokesperson told Newshub. "That would strongly indicate it's not a Qantas flight."
Contrails are frequently mistaken for meteors, especially when they're lit by the setting sun and appear to have an orange hue like the mysterious Canterbury phenomenon.
"If the air at cruise altitude is cold enough there will be a contrail, and if the air is humid enough the ice cannot evaporate and it can't dissipate," he says.
So what is a contrail?
Despite some theories that they're created by the Government to secretly poison the world's population, much like that trail of thought, they are in fact just a load of hot air.