After a big night out, George Armstrong was faced with a hangover, the loss of his driver’s licence and a bill for £5 290 from Flight Centre. Confused, he opened the bill’s accompanying letter to discover that the night before, heavily inebriated, he had booked first-class flights from London to the Maldives, to spend a week on his own at the Indian Ocean paradise. The full itinerary detailed how he would be flying with Etihad Airways in December, via Abu Dhabi.
“Thank you so much for popping in the other day. We certainly appreciate your business and hope your [sic] beginning to get excited about your upcoming first-class flights to the Maldives,” Flight Centre wrote. “Please keep in mind, balance is due in full on Friday, November 10 at 12.05pm.”
At the bottom of the letter a member of staff from the Cheltenham branch of Flight Centre had included a folded note. Once opened, Armstrong was relieved to read “George, we’re just kidding. We found you’re driving licence (enclosed) outside our shop and thought you might need it. Just make sure you consider us for your next holiday. Take care.”
Armstrong revealed the prank on Twitter, posting photos of the contents of the letter and saying: “So I was pretty drunk the other night and I lost my ID, then this turns up…” The next day he followed up with a picture of him and Steve, the Flight Centre employee responsible for the joke. “Here’s the man himself, thank you Steve!” he wrote.
Steve, in the response to the tweet, said: “You’re welcome. That’s how we roll.”
The original tweet has now been retweeted 39,000 times and liked 106,000.
A spokesperson for Flight Centre told the Telegraph, "We’re delighted that the dedicated Flight Centre team in Cheltenham were able to reunite Will with his lost driving licence and we hope he’ll visit the store again soon.”
