u/ikediggety

Keith Byrne was 10 while his friend Noel Murray was 13. They had no passports, no tickets, no money and no plan. What they did have was one goal: Keith wanted to meet B.A. Baracus from The A-Team. And B.A. Baracus was in America.

So off they went.

They took the DART to Dún Laoghaire and slipped onto the ferry to Holyhead. Dodged the inspectors. Caught a train to London. Fished coins out of a charity fountain and made their way to Heathrow.

There, they asked a stranger where his flight was headed. New York, he said. Perfect.

They told airport staff their parents were just behind them. Staff waved them through. The two children boarded an Air India flight to JFK without a single document between them.

Nobody questioned them on the plane. They watched a James Bond film and attempted to eat a curry that was far too spicy for the two lads from Dublin.

Reality caught up outside JFK, when they asked a policeman for directions "into town."

What followed was chaos. Front pages worldwide. Three governments scrambling. Two Dublin kids had accidentally exposed enormous holes in international air security. US authorities, terrified of the diplomatic fallout, put them in a guarded hotel suite and fed them like royalty.

Keith remembered it fondly. "They fed us like lords. We loved it."

They were sent home to Darndale, grounded, scolded, and famous forever. Both men still live there today.

Somehow, in forty years, nobody has ever made this into a film. It's surely about time.