LONDON - A Japanese engineer has created a new world record by managing to keep his paper airplane aloft for 27.9 seconds.

Takuo Toda, who is the chairman of Japan Origami Airplane Association, said that his achievement was merely the next step in his ambition of launching a paper plane from space.

Toda had performed his feat at a competition in Hiroshima Prefecture in April and it has now been confirmed by Guinness World Records as the longest ever flight by a paper plane.

“I had thought that the world record was impossible to break, but the key to breaking the record is how high you fly it,” the Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying.

The plane is made from a single sheet of folded paper with no cuts, measuring 10 cm from tip to tail.

He plans to use the same shape to try to break his own record at another event for paper plane enthusiasts in September, but his ultimate aim, remains having one of his aircraft launched from the space shuttle.

“Thirty years ago, I saw a space shuttle - with a similar shape to a paper airplane - returning to Earth,” he said.

Toda, who traces his hobby back to the two years he spent convalescing after a climbing accident while at university, claims to have had made a paper plane with an almost identical triangular configuration three or four years before NASA unveiled its shuttle.

“I thought it would be possible for a paper aircraft to do the same thing, but back then no-one would listen seriously to my ideas,” he said.

“If it is proven that a paper plane can re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and glide back down safely then the scientific community could gain very valuable data about aerodynamics.

“That knowledge could even lead to improvements in the design of spacecraft in the future as it would prove that even ultra-light materials are able to withstand the demands of the upper atmosphere,” he added. (ANI)