I was talking with @Dr. Cockroach this morning and we managed to get onto the subject of flight. Cardboard of course was mentioned, and there might be a secretive project in the works... Muahahah!

Enough about that though, he reminded me of the paper aeroplane I designed when I was maybe 6 or 7 years old. My granddad was still alive, and he'd shown me the classic 'Bird' fold, with the beak and a tail made by tearing off a strip from the bottom of the paper and inserting it lengthways :

I very quickly mangled up the beak throwing it, and without thinking much about it re-folded it into a solid chunk of paper to get rid of it. The resulting plane flew like most darts did, pretty badly, until I copied a real plane and gave it elevators to keep the nose up.

This transformed it from a dart to a plane, that loop-the-loops and glides in a wide curve to the floor. It can be flown in a room, off the stairs etc, but it really comes into its own in a large garden, and in wide open spaces with a gentle wind it is truly spectacular.

Here's how to make one to impress the kids with.

First make the base fold. This is the same as the Origami Box fold to begin with.

The purpose of this is to make a solid weight at the front of the craft that will take repeated impacts from landing so you can play with it for more than a few minutes. Turns out it also stabilises it in flight, turning it into a wind.

Now you have the basic form, fold and tuck a couple of times to layer it up right at the front, and then fold the wings down the same as a standard dart. About half-inch is plenty for the fuselage part

It really does make a huge difference adding stabilisers. After much experimenting with gull-shaped wings and various stabilisers, pointing straight down and with the wingtips higher than the roots gives the most lift and stability. Without elevators at the trailing edges it flies in a straight line like a dart, and may even dive into the ground. About 1/4" deep is enough to loop on takeoff, keep the nose steady without stalling and glide well. With practise you can trim these up for all sorts of tricks because they last a while too.

Enjoy! :-D