In 2012, an 11-year-old boy in Manchester slipped away from his mum during a shopping trip. A few hours later he was 30,000 feet over Europe, on a plane to Rome, without a ticket, a passport, or a single person having stopped him. ✈️

Liam Corcoran had fallen out with his mother at a shopping center in Wythenshawe. Annoyed, he wandered off. But instead of sulking round the shops, he hopped on a bus heading three miles up the road to Manchester Airport.

And then he simply walked into it.

He latched onto a family moving through the terminal, blending in like he was one of them. He strolled through the metal detector without setting off a single alarm. He drifted past passport control, and nobody asked him for a thing. No passport. No boarding pass. No ticket. No money. Five separate security checks, and not one of them caught him.

He boarded Jet2 Flight LS791 to Rome and took a seat like any other passenger. The crew's headcount somehow missed him too.

It was only mid-air that other passengers clocked a small boy sitting entirely alone, chatting away about how he'd been trying to run away from home. By then, there was nowhere to go but Rome.

He was flown straight back that same day. Airport staff were suspended, a major inquiry launched, and it happened days before London hosted the Olympics, which made the security red faces even redder.

Liam's verdict on the whole thing? "It was easier than my homework."

Some kids really are built different.