Juan Sánchez Vidal

Juan Sánchez Vidal (born January 3, 1958) is a model aircraft collector from Palma de Mallorca. His collection of over one thousand commercial airline models is considered by many experts to be the world’s largest.

Sánchez Vidal grew up near Son Bonet and started working at Son Sant Joan Airport at age fifteen, retiring in 2020. He began collecting in 1973 with a Convair CV-990 model from the defunct Spanish airline Spantax, where he worked. Rodolfo Bay, Spantax’s then-president, personally gave him one of his models. Through his hobby, he befriended coworkers from other airlines and began receiving more planes, eventually meeting airline figures and celebrities such as Formula One champion Niki Lauda, owner of Lauda Air.

The largest model in his collection, an Air France Airbus A320, came from a trade with a local Air France worker who also collected. He also built a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 model of Air Europa—an airline that never operated that aircraft type—while working for them. His collection includes models of American Airlines’ Boeing 757 and Boeing 767, the same aircraft types used in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

His collection has been featured in numerous specialized magazine reports and interviews. In 1987, he held an exhibition at Son Sant Joan Airport. In March 2000, after negotiations with Barajas International Airport in Madrid, his models were displayed in the international arrivals terminal there until 2003. Sánchez Vidal is fluent in Spanish and Catalan.