How Engineering Students in Pisa Built the World’s Largest Paper Airplane

Inside a vast exhibition hall in Bologna, one student stepped onto a platform three meters above the floor and gave the aircraft a firm push. The wings extended farther than a city bus is long, yet the structure left the edge cleanly and settled into a steady glide. It traveled 59 meters before its nose met a line of columns at the far end of the space. That single launch secured the Guinness World Record for the largest paper airplane ever built and flown. Engineering students from the University of Pisa created the aircraft, known as ICARUS. It spans 20.04 meters from wingtip to wingtip, measures 7 meters in length, and weighs 28.49 kilograms at completion.

The previous record, held since 2013 by a team from Germany’s Braunschweig Institute of Technology, was a real beast, with 18.21 meters of wingspan and an official flight distance of 18 meters, but this latest plane absolutely exploded the old mark, flying more than triple the distance while meeting all official requirements. You know what was really crazy? The whole thing was made entirely of paper and glue. The students utilized stronger 120-gram stock for the major pieces and lighter 40-gram sheets for the covering, then laminated many layers on top of each other in a smart honeycomb design that provided the necessary stiffness without adding bulk. That meant that the wings retained their shape well even under flying loads, and they managed to keep the overall weight low.

Fifteen engineering students built the entire thing from scratch, by hand. They included lengthy spars that run the length of each wing, as well as ribs to maintain the proper airfoil curve and a tail section to keep things stable. They even ran computer simulations of airflow around the shape to help refine the design before cutting out any large pieces, and they built smaller prototypes to test and tweak the balance and control, which began with some simple paper airplanes they folded during class breaks. That began out as a joke, but when the team decided to go for the record, science communicator Jakidale stepped in to help them out, sort of coordinating resources and sharing updates as they built the thing.

One of the most difficult challenges they faced was determining the appropriate humidity. Paper does not like wetness because it expands and compresses, wreaking havoc on surfaces and glued parts. They had to keep a constant check on the working conditions while assembling all of the separate sections, and every millimeter counted because excess weight or being even slightly off would reduce their lift and make it difficult to stay airborne.

Guinness World Records required a launch from a platform no higher than three metres and a minimum flight distance of 15 metres. ICARUS breezed past that with ease, and even had an official judge and an engineer on hand to inspect the wingspan and other dimensions during the We Make Future event at BolognaFiere.
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