A British boy band singer has collapsed from heat exhaustion during a flight while wearing 12 layers of clothing in a bid to beat the excess luggage fee.

James McElvar, 19, from Scottish group Rewind, was about to board an easyJet flight from London Stansted airport to Glasgow when he was told he had one carry-on bag too many.

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Staff said he was allowed to take only one bag on board, so would have to pay a $94-dollar excess charge or bin his second bag.

With his band mates already aboard and just minutes to spare, he made a snap decision, emptying his rucksack and donning the entire contents.

James McElvar collapsed from exhaustion after flight.

McElvar was wearing six T-shirts, four jumpers, two jackets, one pair of shorts, three pairs of jeans, two pairs of jogging bottoms and two hats.

“There was a lot of clothes,” he said on the band’s Twitter feed.

“It was very difficult to walk onto the plane. I managed to sit in the seat for a minute or two. But I just couldn’t take the heat.”

Barely able to move, he could not even get the seatbelt round him.

“I was sweating and they kept asking me to put the belt on but I couldn’t sort it,” he said.

“It was just a nightmare I was having.”

As he was drenched in sweat and feeling sick, cabin crew laid him out, stripped down, on an empty row of seats, where he was violently sick and then fainted.

The singer has no memory of the rest of the flight and was taken off the plane at Glasgow Airport to a waiting ambulance.