Man Surprises Pilots with Intricate Paper Airplanes That Take 15 Hours to Make: See Their Reactions (Exclusive)

Joshua Jung isn’t normally the type of person who approaches strangers in an airport. Yet, his love of aviation and appreciation for airline workers pushed him to do something he never imagined.

Since Jung was little, he’s always been interested in airplanes, or as he describes it to PEOPLE, “big machines that fly.” By middle school, he discovered a community of fellow enthusiasts with collections of hundreds of die cast model planes. Although he wanted his own, his parents quickly shot it down due to the potential cost of models, which cost $40 each.

Instead, Jung looked for a “cheap” alternative, opting to print out templates on thick cardstock and build his own. 

“Honestly, for the first year, they were horrible. My mom kept asking me, ‘Why are you wasting your time on this?’” Jung says with a laugh. “But I persisted and kept practicing. I actually got to the point where they look pretty good.”

Today, the manufacturing engineer is 23 and in his tenth year of building paper model airplanes. He estimates each replica takes him about 15 hours to complete and he usually dedicates two or three hours to the craft after work each day. In total, he’s built about 300 on his own. 

“When I began, I didn’t know what tools to use, I didn’t know what the right technique was, obviously my hands were not used to building that small of detail,” he explains. “Since I’ve done it for so long, it goes together pretty easily now.”

In October 2024, Jung started sharing his creations on social media. His first post on Instagram, showing off a Delta Air Lines Airbus A350-900 modeled after the company’s special “Team USA” plane, garnered 109 likes. But over time, he’s racked up more than 70,000 followers. 

Over on TikTok, he took a slightly different approach with his content. As someone who “loves” the airline industry, he wanted to spread positivity in places like an airport — a space typically filled with stressed employees and passengers. Inspired by another creator gifting photographs to strangers, Jung took it upon himself to share his collection with pilots.

His first video, shared on Sept. 27, shows Jung gifting an Airbus A350 model to a Skywest pilot flying for Delta.

“This is taking paper airplanes to a whole new level,” the pilot says with a smile.

Since September, Jung’s channel has received more than 400,000 likes on his videos gifting planes to pilots and showing behind-the-scenes clips of his process. 

“Seeing the impact the videos have had — all the comments that are so uplifting… I’m really thankful that my talent can have that impact,” Jung says.

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In the future, Jung plans to continue to give his models to pilots, but he wants to spread the love to other airline workers too.

“I want to give more away to other employees at the airport, like ticket counter agents and gate agents,” he tells PEOPLE, though the interactions can be time consuming for those on duty.

“Maybe I can just buy them a chocolate,” he jokes. “I did that for a flight attendant… she found my video and she [said], ‘That Kit Kat was really touching.’ So maybe that’s something I can do as well.”