HOME OUT OF THIN AER

A Dundalk-born ex-pat who hadn’t been home for more than a year surprised his parents at Christmas by appearing in their home ‘out of thin aer’ thanks to free return flights from the national carrier.

Aer Lingus was delighted to bring James Lambert home to his Kilkerley parents, Michael and Madonna, just in time for the festive season. And the whole remarkable homecoming was captured by a film crew who used the pretext of parents using technology to stay in touch with children to be there when James came through the door on December 20.

The video of the homecoming captured James’s and two other people’s surprise returns back to their parents and was posted on the Aer Lingus twitter account with the hastag teachtabhaile where it has received a great reception.

Speaking to the Argus just before his return to New York last Friday, James, a former Dundalk Grammar School student who works as the product team at a tech start-up in Manhattan, explained how the emotional reunion came about.

He said: ‘I wasn’t home for Christmas in 2015 but a friend of mine tagged me in a post as an ex-pat that year. I hadn’t been away that long at that stage, but the airline emailed me at the end of November this year and asked if I would be interested in going forward for the competition this year.

‘I had to send in a biog and a small video to them and then the production team had to come up with an idea to tell my parents about why they wanted to film them, without giving the surprise away. So they told them that they were doing a documentary for TV about parents using technology to stay in touch with their kids abroad’.

James said that his dad ‘was a little suspicious’ about why the cameras were in the house, but the production crew were able to capture the magical moment that James returns to his home and is greeted by his delighted sister who runs to him and throws her arms around him before he is embraced by his surprised mum and dad.

‘ They were genuinely surprised and my sister was really shocked. It was great and I was really pleased to get home for Christmas’.