To not pay to choose seats but expect to sit together?

We flew home from Turkey tonight via Easyjet. Although the plane was full it appeared that everyone had pre booked seats so no problems.

why is that hysterically funny though?

We’ve recently flown and a family of6 got on the plane and asked immediately if they could sit together, no was the answer unless people were willing to give up their seats, majority of people pay & book specific seats so why should they have to give up their seats for others who want free seats?
This family adults & children were all scattered around the plane 🤣🤣🤣

That’s for the update. This is what I do and we’ve never not sat together.

Being 4 or 5 some random often ends up next to the kids and usually they’ve paid extra - to sit next to an annoying kid!

You could also choose a window and aisle seat paid for and end up with an annoying kid in the middle.

Paying doesn’t mean you choose your neighbours!

But I would be deeply miffed at being asked to move. Yes our extra luggage would still be in the overhead locker but who is going to chuck £64 at us to change seats for one leg of trip

That's exactly what I meant, friendlycat; if a non-payer expected the airline to seat them together and they haven't, by all means take it up with the airline

But they don't ... suddenly it becomes a "crisis" which someone else is expected to solve, and the issue that other passengers have paid for their seats and that the least they might expect is an offer seems not to occur

But that’s the problem isn’t it. We’ve paid £32 each, each way for our forthcoming trip for upfront, extra leg room and additional overhead bags.
Completely our choice as both of us will need to work whilst away and need laptops etc in hand luggage.

But I would be deeply miffed at being asked to move. Yes our extra luggage would still be in the overhead locker but who is going to chuck £64 at us to change seats for one leg of trip.

I don’t have a problem with menu pricing as it means you select what you need/want. I have no problem at other times of not selecting a seat or hold luggage.

I do see the point that people make about travelling with say a 2 year old but where does the cut off come into play if it’s always assumed that families sit together.

With subjects like this I usually refer back to a pal who's worked for years as cabin crew for a couple of the majors, and interestingly, she said that she's quite literally never seen anyone offer to make up the loss of those being asked to swap

Apparently they'll talk a storm about all the "good reasons" they need the seat instead, but compensating those they expect to move ... no, that seems not to occur

Example of what can happen if seat occupancy isn't controlled or at least monitored here:

https://simpleflying.com/alitalia-a320-tail-strike-passenger-imbalance/

I suspect there's been a contributor here who may work in loading, hopefully they'll contribute, but in the meantime as I recall load and balance there can be serious problems (serious as in dangerous) in some circumstances with literally going to bus style "free seating", most especially on flights that are not full... your example of 100 tickets sold on a 180 seat aircraft might almost be the worse case if people didn't sit where you'd expect them to sit...

You always needs somebody who, if not allocating seating, is monitoring what's going on to ensure limits aren't breached.

How can the ‘alternative’ be to add £20?

If there are 100 seats per plane then they sell 100 tickets - and people get on and sit down.

Or those who want seats together now have to pay for he privilege of an extra staff member to allocate seats.

Maybe if you all refused to pay we can go back to getting on and sitting down like we do on buses.

As previous people have said - some airlines took everything down to get to the cheapest price & then you pay for what you want above that. Alternatively they could just add £20 onto the price and your child gets a guaranteed seat next to you . If you take the cheapest seats , then I reckon you are gambling - not the airline's problem if you did not pay to get a young child to sit next to you when you had the option. But this isn't the first post about this and I am sure it won't be the last 😊✈. Personally I would stump up £20 but I am a bit more cautious & I am not going to argue on a plane

I'd pay. £20 on top of the cost of a whole holiday isn't so much for peace of mind and reassurance.

I work that out by observation & thinking. It's not difficult.

Cheap airline tickets emerged from a change of airline policies about pricing. I remember the time before cheap air travel.

Various low cost airlines (for example, RyanAir) introduced a demand-based 'dynamic pricing' model, at the same time as they stripped out and priced everything - bar the actual flight - as paid-for extras.

And then used that model to drop the base price of the flight.

This was mostly for short haul travel. It's interesting that there are far fewer airlines which use this model for long haul travel (anything over 8 hours). Apart from the appalling Scoot Airlines (cheap offshoot of Singapore Airlines - avoid, avoid, avoid.

It might be (I don't run an airline) that passengers are far less prepared to put up with RyanAir style conditions on a trip to Australia or the US west coast.

The cheap airline/base price/short haul argument runs that you pay a base price for a flight to get you from A to B, and that price is dynamically priced (higher at popular times, lower at less popular times). You then add the things that are important to you - seat choice, hold luggage, big cabin bag etc etc.

It means that if Person A is happy to sit anywhere and carry very little, they pay for that. If Person B prefers a particular seat & wants to bring a cabin bag on the flight, she pays for that. And so on.

It's not rocket science to work out that if international law & industry standards required that families are seated together as a priority and without extra 'seat choice' payment, airlines using this base-price model will attempt to recoup income elsewhere.

The opinion that airlines should not price this way is a whole other argument.

My point was some airlines currently offer free seat selection to groups with a lap infant aged 0-2 which isn’t really necessary and they’d be better not doing that but offering it to those with kids aged 2-4 instead. So a like for like swap, just offering to the age group that actually needs it.

Yeah, I love the idea that if we all just stop paying it they’ll give it to us for free instead.

Maybe in an ideal world, but back in the real world…

The most sensible post to date. Of course ticket prices would go up. It’s just economics.

If revenue from seat choice goes the airlines will have pretty much no option but to raise revenue from elsewhere in the pricing structure..

You can have lots of fun with numbers with this since it's hard to get definite data from the airlines but you can make some credible estimates. If for example, half of the passengers (so about 100) on a typical Loco flight paid 10 pound for seat choice and that company did 1000 sectors a day that's the airline earning a million a day, give or take, on a very good day through that revenue stream.

Now I can hear jaws drop and no doubt calls of profiteering, but now for context have a look at an average airline's annual reports, especially the profits, and then subtract that guesstimate of 365 million a year ( and that's a max because I'm ignoring off season when income drops).. Is the company still in the black and if so by how much?

For completeness also look at any other airline's books for the last three years and then have a think if profits in 2023 really are excessive.

Fundamentally whichever way you slice this if paying for seat choice goes, whatever the reason, the airlines will claw the lost revenue back from passengers through other means.

Well, we know what will happen then, don’t we? Prices for all adults will go up. So those without children traveling will subsidies your children

How do you work that out? Maybe if people stopped being ripped off then they would stop doing it?

Can you imagine if the us fares increased depending on how popular a bus was? It either costs X to fly or it doesn’t.

Or more likely they will put the cost of the child fares up?

I would just pay the £20

The fundamental thing is that flying is NOT a human right! It’s a choice. When you make the choice to fly (or emigrate to Australia or whatever) you also choose to spend money.

it’s not a “human right” to sit next to anyone specifically. If you need or want to, you do that and bear the consequences.

That those with under 5s in their group get free seat selection at the time of booking maybe?

Well, we know what will happen then, don’t we? Prices for all adults will go up. So those without children travelling will subsidise your children …

Exactly this. I always get the impression on these threads that many people do not seem to understand that passenger groups do not always neatly fit the configuration of the plane's seating and therefore it is not always feasible to sit them directly next to each other

Well to be fair we were a family of three so we always fitted neatly into one row.

It's also a problem for the poor adult who has to sit next to the whining toddler.

Hence why they should be sat next to (same row, same set of seats) as standard.

Airlines should not deliberately split up families.