777-300R model made of manila file folders

Building a full-size airliner out of metals and composites is impressive, but single-handedly crafting a miniature version out of nothing but thin card stock and glue is simply amazing.

Luca Iaconi-Stewart has been working for five years now on a 1:60-scale version of an Air India Boeing 777-300R. He has built and rebuilt the fuselage in his effort to achieve greater realism, and it now includes seats, lavatories, galley, and overhead bins. He’s even modelled functional cargo hatches and cabin doors that replicate the hinges and locking mechanisms of the originals.

Iaconi-Stewart used Adobe Illustrator to render the parts, based on detailed diagrams of the original, then cut and assembled the tiny pieces with the aid of tweezers. To preserve the construction material’s natural appearance, he’s only applied clear gloss finish to indicate the areas with painted livery.

Check out this website to get an overview, then visit Iaconi-Stewart’s flickr pages to see the intricately detailed nose landing gear, cockpit, fan-jet engines with opening and closing thrust-reversers, and row-upon-row of first-, business-, and economy-class seating!