A Chinese farmer-turned-mechanic has constructed a life-sized Airbus A320 replica to fulfill a childhood dream of owning a plane. Looking and weighing the same as the real thing, the replica has one flaw: it doesn’t actually fly.

It took two years and $400,000 for aircraft enthusiast Zhu Yue to take hobby scale modeling to a whole new level. With help from his friends, the 40-year-old garlic-farmer-turned-mechanic built a full-scale plane model.

Handmade Airbus A320! Chinese farmer builds full-size replica of the plane pic.twitter.com/6C5gg6VEgP — China Xinhua News (@XHNews) 10 января 2019 г.

Compared to real A320s, which cost over $90 million apiece, the model’s construction was cheap. The replica was made from over 50 tons of steel, weighting the about the same as a real, fully-loaded plane.

The model is not just a hull resembling a plane since it features all the main structural pieces of a real-world aircraft like longerons and a more-or-less properly built fuselage. Moreover, the ‘turbines’ in the replica’s engines can actually spin, yet they won’t actually take it anywhere.

While the Zhu’s main goal was to fulfil his childhood dream of owning a plane, the replica is not a mere toy for him. The man plans to turn it into a business venture, establishing a restaurant, wedding photography service and a flight simulator attraction within the massive structure.

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