25 of Canada’s top paper plane engineers recently battled it out for a chance to represent Canada in the Red Bull Paper Wings World Championship taking place at Hangar-7 in Salzburg, Austria on May 4-5.

Pete McLeod was on site at the national final that took place at MX Aerospace Centre to oversee the competition and serve as a judge.

“Judging the paper wings competition brought back a lot of great memories of making paper airplanes during class in high school," said McLeod from the PMR hangar leaning on the Edge with a smile. "It's too bad the rules prevent use of engines, I know it's paper planes, but adding a few horses could really make things interesting."

Students from 10 universities across Canada competed in one of three categories: distance, airtime and aerobatics.

Zsean Qureshi earned top spot in the longest distance category with a flight distance of 37.4 metres (122.7 feet). Ken Blackburn and William Murphy took home the title for longest airtime when their planes stayed airborne for 10.19 seconds.

Addison Asuchak captured the aerobatics category. Addison wowed Pete and the other judges with his technical design and creative performance earning the top score of 23 points.