Sometimes I’ll peruse the internet and find a travel story that actually happened years ago. But the story is too good not to share, y’know? This post is about one of those stories, which just happened to have occurred back in 2015. But honestly, it could have just as easily happened nowadays.
As I’m sure you know, nearly all airlines don’t allow you to change names on a boarding pass. There are a few (like these), but that’s all. Of course, there was that one guy who thought he could outsmart Spirit Airlines “no name change” rule by taking advantage of this loophole, but as others said in the replies to that post, there are other things that were probably going to make that scheme not work.
But anyway, back in 2015, a British teenager went as far as legally changing his name so he wouldn’t have to pay what would have been £220 ($337 in U.S. dollars at the time) in administrative fees.
Adam Armstrong, then age 19 and a digital marketing student at Leeds City College, was booked to fly to Ibiza with his then 17-year-old girlfriend, India Lomas. India’s stepfather booked Adam’s Ryanair ticket under the name “Adam West” because that’s what Armstrong called himself on social media.
“Her stepdad got my name from Facebook but I had put it as Adam West as a joke, because he was the actor who played Batman on TV,” West told The Guardian newspaper.
Whoopsie!
When he called Ryanair to try to fix the mistake, Adam was told there would be a £220 fee to change the names on the ticket.
So instead of paying the fee, Adam took advantage of a workaround. The government didn’t charge a fee to change your name, so “Adam Armstrong” did the paperwork to legally become “Adam West.” He then paid the £103 to expedite his new passport so he could get it in time – but it was still cheaper than what Ryanair wanted for a name change.
“Ryanair prides themselves on being a customer-centric business, it just seems like a joke when they wouldn’t change the name. I just thought it was completely ridiculous. All they needed to do was hit the backspace key on a keyboard and they want to charge me £220,” Adam said at the time.
In a statement, Ryanair said “Customers are asked to ensure that the details they enter at the time of booking are correct before completing their booking and we offer a 24-hour grace period to correct minor booking errors.
“A name change fee is charged to discourage and prevent unauthorized online travel agents from ‘screenscraping’ Ryanair’s cheapest fares and reselling them on to unwitting consumers at hugely inflated costs,” the statement continued.
Besides saving money by changing his name instead of paying Ryanair to fix the mistake, Adam said he made a profit, since he sold his story to The Sun.
He planned on changing his name back to Armstrong after that passport expires in 2025.
H/T: The Guardian
Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.
Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary, or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.
Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team.