Students break record for world’s largest paper plane

A team of engineering students entered the record books after building and flying the world’s largest paper airplane.

The group from Italy’s University of Pisa created the giant plane, which has a wingspan of 65.75 feet and extends 23 feet from nose to tail.

Called Project Icarus, the students built the huge plane entirely out of paper and glue, with the help of Jakidale, who is influential in engineering education.

After months of planning and testing, the team successfully launched the aircraft at the We Make Future fair at BolognaFiere in Bologna.

The giant paper plane flew 193.5 feet, securing the Guinness World Record as the world’s largest paper plane.

Thus, the students ended the 13-year reign of Germany’s Braunschweig Institute of Technology, which broke the previous record in 2013.

The ambitious project started as light-hearted classroom fun before turning into a serious engineering challenge, the team said.

In their statement, the students said, “It all started with a few paper airplanes as a joke between classes. We were students who were convinced that even a piece of paper could turn into real engineering with the right method.”

“Months of studies, simulations, errors and restarts followed. Finally, we managed to bring back to Italy a world record that had remained unchanged for thirteen years.”

Members of the Unipi team involved in the record-breaking attempt were: Filippo De Paoli, Lorenzo Cioli, Emanuele Campinoti, Manuel Santoro, Giovanni Chiarelli, Luca Moni, Andrea Cipriano, Martina Cacciotti, Greta Ferrante, Gianmaria Ferrante, Jacopo Sardi, Dario Nista, Daniele Rusconi Braga, Dario Del Carlo and Gabriele Frediani.