How To Make The Sky King Paper Airplane

The Sky King paper airplane was designed by Takuo Toda, and beat the 2009 world record for paper airplane flight time at 27.9 seconds.  What I love about it is the lock on the nose, which is seriously too cool for school.  You'll need a standard 8.5 by 11" piece of paper, and if you don't want to eyeball a couple of measurements, a ruler with centimeters.  Google sites has a beautiful page that includes pdfs and videos of several paper airplanes; here's their pdf and video for this version of the Sky King.  This tutorial uses the printed pdf.

Step 1:  Fold in half lengthwise.

Step 2:  Fold corners down.

Step 3:  Leaving 2.5 cm at the bottom, fold point downwards.

Step 4:  Fold corners down again.

Step 5:  Unfold corners and fold sides into these creases.

Step 6:  Refold step 4 corners.

Step 7:  Fold point upwards to point where edges meet.

Step 8:  Unfold tip and flip plane over.

Step 9:  Fold in half.

Step 10:  Fold tip up to meet step 7 crease.

Step 11:  Open tip to form a front square.

Step 12:  Flatten square.

Step 13:  Unflatten square and fold top layer down.

Step 14:  Reflatten square.

Step 15:  Fold wings along center square seam, parallel to bottom edge.

Step 16:  Fold parallel winglets upwards, 1.75 cm in height.

As is customary, curve back edge of each wing upwards for optimum flight.

If the nose is pointing away from you, flex the edge of paper facing you into a lowercase "m."

Happy flying!