David Rush has broken so many Guinness World Records — more than 200 titles held at once, by his own count — that a new one barely slows him down. The Boise, Idaho, engineer's latest, verified by Guinness and publicized this week, is for the most paper aircraft folded in one hour: 415 of them.
Rush made the attempt on a racquetball court at a Boise YMCA, working under Guinness's exacting rules for the category. Each plane had to be built using a specific seven-fold pattern, and every finished aircraft needed to fly a minimum verified distance to count toward the total. A team of assistants kept him supplied with paper, ferried completed planes to official witnesses and test-threw each one to confirm it qualified.
8.67 Seconds a Plane
Across the full 60 minutes, Rush averaged 8.67 seconds per airplane, according to UPI, which covered the record this week as Guinness continued rolling out newly certified titles. The official Guinness listing credits Rush with the mark, set at the Boise attempt earlier this year.
Paper aircraft are something of a specialty for Rush, who has separately chased — and repeatedly broken — the record for fastest time to fold and throw a single paper airplane, a category currently standing at just over four and a half seconds. He first drew wide attention in 2024, when he claimed 15 separate Guinness titles in a single day during a marathon visit to the organization's headquarters, a feat that remains one of the most prolific single-day record hauls on the books.
Rush treats record-breaking as close to a full-time pursuit, cycling through categories from balloon-juggling to speed-folding as fast as Guinness can verify them. The paper-airplane count is unlikely to be his last of the year; by his own social media posts, he is already plotting his next attempt.
