Giant Pterosaur Between Australia and Indonesia
In 2008, a Britten-Norman Islander airplane, a fairly light plane having two engines, was being flown by two very experienced former navy-pilots. They were mostly done with flying from Australia to Indonesia, being at 6500 feet altitude and over the sea, when the pilot saw something coming straight at him, on a collision course. He thought it must have been another plane, somehow at the wrong altitude for that heading. He put his plane into a dive, catching the attention of the copilot, who had been looking down at a chart or something. The approaching flyer also dived, so the pilot banked to the left, saving them all from disaster.
What set apart this near collision from other emergencies was what happened in the brief seconds when the other flyer passed by the Britten-Norman Islander: The two men saw it flap its wings; obviously it was no plane.
Both men said the same word at the same time: “pterodactyl.” This is not to say that those pilots were anxious to promote the concept of non-extinction of pterosaurs, for they made it clear, in their communications with the cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb, that they were not taking any position on any interpretation of what they saw. In other words, they were not biased in favor of a pterosaur interpretation. But they could find no other logical explanation for it, even though some people would think a modern pterosaur illogical.
The pilot was serious enough about the pterosaur possibility that he phoned Whitcomb to report the encounter, which was a recent encounter.
Possible Ropen off Indonesian Coast
The incident was 150 miles southeast of Bali, Indonesia. It was reported, in August of 2008, by the pilot, to the investigator Jonathan Whitcomb.
According to the second edition of the book Searching for Ropens (by Whitcomb), the bat-like flying creature that has a monkey face is called “ahool.” Apparently it eats fresh-water fish. One eyewitness described a head crest and an upright posture on tree trunks; a ropen of Umboi Island has also been seen to hold itself upright on a tree trunk.
The pilot saw the creature for about 5-6 seconds; the co-pilot, for only about 2-3 seconds. The co-pilot later reported that a common explanation–pelican–has problems: What the two ex-navy pilots had seen was too big and the wrong color (darker than the pelicans he knows live there).
A “dinosaur bird” is actually what some eyewitnesses call a living pterosaur. These flying creatures have been observed all over the world, but they seem to be nocturnal, at least for the most part.