A British teenager has legally changed his name to Adam West to avoid having to pay almost $420 in administrative fees to airline Ryanair after buying a plane ticket that was mistakenly made in the wrong name.

Adam Armstrong, 19, was booked to fly to Ibiza with his 17-year-old girlfriend when his girlfriend's stepfather erroneously booked the ticket under the name "Adam West" because that's what Armstrong calls 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.

When he went to correct the error, West was informed that there would be a £220 fee to change the names on the ticket — double the usual amount because the name was printed on both tickets.

At today's exchange rate, 220 pounds is almost $420 Canadian.

So instead of paying the fee, West decided to take advantage of a workaround by legally changing his name to "Adam West" which the government doesn't charge a fee to do, and then paying more than £100 to have a rush delivery made of a new passport for him bearing that name.

"Ryanair pride 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," West told the Guardian.

Ryanair has earned a reputation all across Europe for offering rock-bottom base fares, but in recent years they have faced new criticism for nickel and diming customers on fees for just about every other part of the travel process.

In a statement, the airline 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 in order 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 said.