Man Changes Name To 'Adam West' To Avoid Paying $336 Airline Fee

By Bill Chappell

Published June 5, 2015 at 2:35 PM CDT

Adam Armstrong was using the name Adam West on Facebook — and now, it's his legal name. The 19-year-old chose to get a new passport rather than pay more than $330 in fees.

It started with a joke: On Facebook, Adam Armstrong listed his name as Adam West, the actor who played Batman in the 1960s. But then his girlfriend's stepfather bought him a plane ticket with the West name on it — and the airline wanted $336 to change it.

Adam, who lives in Manchester, England, is 19 — and he really wanted to go on this trip to the resort island of Ibiza. So he simply became Adam West. It was cheaper to change his name and get a new passport than to pay airline Ryanair's fees.

"He changed his name by deed poll for free," ITV reports, "then rushed through a new passport costing £103." (Under today's exchange rate, that's around $157.)

The price for changing the name on Adam's ticket would have been particularly steep because it shared the same booking as Adam's girlfriend — triggering Ryanair to double its normal fee to change a ticket, to £220 ($336).

When we checked out Adam's Facebook page, he was still calling himself Adam West (although the URL reflects his previous legal name).

Ryanair says it has a 24-hour grace period for correcting booking errors, and that its fees are meant to keep people from reselling the budget airline's tickets at a profit.

If you're wondering what a deed poll is: "It is a form of legal contract but it differs from legal contracts between two or more parties in that it only concerns one person (and it is only signed by that person in the presence of a witness)."