Benidorm holiday-maker's amazing airport hack to avoid 'frustrating' £48 baggage charge

A savvy holidaymaker has revealed the hack he used to avoid a £48 airport charge, including five pairs of underpants. Phil Lisle, from Cardiff, was told he'd have to pay the extra sum of almost £50 because his bag was slightly protruding.

He paid for it on the way from Bristol to Benidorm, but instead of risking it en route home, he thought up a clever tactic. And like Joey from Friends, he donned all his clothing to evade getting caught out again on the return journey home.

He had fellow plane passengers - and the staff - in stitches as he boarded wearing 13 shirts, two pairs of trousers, four pairs of shorts and five pairs of underpants. He had been travelling via EasyJet with a group of friends for a 60th birthday celebration last month when he was charged at Bristol Airport for the weight of his holdall leather bag.

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Phil said he was baffled when staff informed him he’d have to pay £48 because his bag was slightly protruding from a metal box used to determine whether hand luggage can qualify for free boarding, WalesOnline reports. “I didn’t want to cause a fuss so I paid for it,” Phil told WalesOnline, “but I was frustrated. I knew it was a bit heavy but I’d just thrown some clothes in there not thinking about it to be honest

“It was really galling because my shirts wouldn’t have come to £48. They are the type you get in Lidl middle aisle. I asked if I could bin them all but they said no.”

The night before Phil returned home from Benidorm he thought up a plan to don every item of clothing in the bag other than a couple of pairs of shoes. “I was getting ready to come back and I thought to myself: ‘I wonder’,” he recalled.

“So I put everything on to see how they fitted. Every shirt, every pair of underpants, every pair of shorts and trousers. I was roasting. If I was an octopus I’d have got the shoes on too.”

The following day, after getting through security and duty free, Phil went into the bathroom and tipped the bag upside down before putting on every item of clothing he could manage. “I started with the small shirts, obviously, and then went for the bigger and more loose ones at the end," he explained.

"I had 13 shirts on, four shorts, two trousers and five underpants. Good grief I could hardly walk, and yet I’m not sure many people realised. I must have been 20 stone.

“Most of my mates didn’t seem to be aware. One of them asked how many shirts I was wearing and I just waved it away. I actually thought I was bound to be stopped before I boarded, but no-one else said a thing.

“When we got on I told my mate to get his camera out and I started taking the shirts off one by one. Loads of people were laughing. I took the shirts off, and then I took a breather and started taking my trousers off."

Footage taken by Phil's friend Daniel Collins shows Phil taking the clothes off while passengers laugh watching him. Phil said he had been a little worried he might get in trouble, but even the airline staff saw the funny side.

“The stewardesses were laughing their heads off and when I was getting it all off," he said. "They were great to be fair. I said: ‘Come on, you can’t throw me off now.’ And they just laughed. Fair play to them, at the end when we were getting off in Bristol one of them said: ‘Don’t forget all your shirts.’

“It was funny and a bit of a laugh but I do feel it’s a bit strange they let me get on with all those clothes on. I wouldn’t do it again but I wouldn’t pay for extra weight either. I’d just take no clothes and buy them over there.

“It was half of me not wanting to pay the money but also a bit of an experiment to see if they told me I couldn’t do it. What was the worst that could happen? They tell me to take it all off? I enjoyed it.”