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

As a general point because for the UK there is little in the way of rules individual airlines can and do have differing policies on this issue...for example this is BA's:

"We want to make travelling as a family as enjoyable and stress-free as possible. To ensure your family has the best seats when you fly, we recommend choosing yours in advance when you book. There may be an additional fee for this.
If you don’t choose your seats in advance, we always do our best to seat your family together based on flight seat availability. This may mean that you’ll be seated in adjacent rows or across the aisle. All children under 12 will be seated with an accompanying adult. Anyone over 12 may be seated separately."

Maybe those lobbying for change might find the best way to put pressure on some airlines to change their pricing structure would be for customers to look at those policies in detail and then choose their operator accordingly....

I hope I am not being cynical in suspecting that maybe that's not the preferred answer...........

Didn't we all realise about 600 posts ago that the OP can just check in 30 days before and see what her seat selection is before making a decision? Therefore the risk is very low indeed.

https://www.caa.co.uk/passengers/before-you-fly/making-a-booking/airline-seating-allocations/#:~:text=Families%2C%20children%20and%20infants&text=Young%20children%20and%20infants%20who,seat%20row%20from%20accompanying%20adults.

The brainwashing in this thread is unreal.

YOU ARE PAYING TO SIT NEXT TO SOMEONE THAT CANNOT BE LEFT UNATTENDED.

Easy Jet offers different seat options to select. They certainly aren’t £20 each, each way. I’ve just selected some at £5.99 per person each way.

Prices on easyJet website are from £12.99 to from £0.99p depending on where you're sitting, so could be as low as a fiver for two seats return.

It's built into the fee structure so they can fill the plane w people who want minimal service as well as those who want to check in luggage. If all tickets were all-inclusive, all flights would be a lot more expensive, and that's the price of mass air travel at a time of deregulation - like it or lump it.

Anyone who thinks their toddler could be seated beside someone else is completely antisocial, and anyone who thinks they shouldn't pay to sit beside their child is a tad negligent.

This thread has really helped me. I have been reading it and thinking; 'Of course you just pay if you want to sit together!!'.

Then I realised that our forthcoming trip- booked through a tour operator did not specify if I needed to pay for preferred seat allocation. I just assumed that because we had paid for a package that it was all done automatically. A phone call later and I discover that it is NOT automatic and this afternoon i have sorted out (and paid for) a preferred seat allocation. My older one has autism and needs a great deal of managing on a flight. If he had been seated away from us it would not have been good.

So this thread has made me doublecheck to see if what i assumed was true was true- and it wasn't.

So thanks!

It's at least £80 not £20 - £20 for each person each way.

As previously mentioned easyJet will not take off if a minor is without parent. This is anyone under 16.

It's just the way it is with many airlines. Menu pricing and you pick what you want and leave what you don't want. It suits many people to take whatever seat and to get on with hand luggage only. But this doesn't really work for a family.

In your situation I would just pay the £20. If you can afford the flight I presume you can afford the £20 as well.

You may be slightly separated, you may not. There may be somebody who would swap with you, there may not. There could be turbulence, there may not. But one thing is for sure you could pay the £20 and be certain you are all sitting together. Which would you prefer to do?

It’s not extortion, or gouging, or profiteering…it’s part of the advertised pricing structure used by pretty much all airlines these days that ensures they make a profit of sorts in an industry that has high costs (seen the price of an Airbus recently) and tight margins.

It is a system which allows those who don’t want/need seat choice, checked bags, priority boarding etc etc to get tickets at a prices they can afford to pay.

@jojo2202 If you’re not exaggerating and your toddler is so physical that they tear hair out and leave bruises then all the more reason you need to ensure they’re next to you, rather than expect a stranger to put up with that.

If you fly with Easyjet or Ryanair you will have to pay for seats unless you want to risk it

When I fly alone with either of the above I don't book a seat as I don't care where I am seated esp if short flight to European city

But when I fly with my children we all have a seat booked to ensure no dramas and we can all sit together

Common sense really

Just pay for the seat like everyone else has to

Doesn't matter if it's the passenger's 2nd birthday or they're 102 you'll have to pay for a seat

That's how it rolls with Easyjet

The cheapest ones are something like around £5.99 per seat

The expensive 40 quid seats are usually front couple of rows

I can’t believe so many people are defending what is basically extortion from the airlines! It’s not a luxury to be able to provide adequate care for a child on a flight that you’ve paid for. I wouldn't pay, I would check in as early as poss, as others have said.

Yep, if people are going to play the "I know my rights" card they'd better be sure they know their rights.

I do have some sympathy with those travelling with children (been there, done that) and I know some (UK) airlines have a slightly stricter policy on family seating than is detailed the information/guidance issued by the CAA but the actual rules are very very permissive.

you would be fairly bruised and have no hair left by the time the flight landed if you sat next to my toddler. 2 year olds don't just sit there so what you are saying is pathetic and ridiculous. It's likely the crew would make you move anyway as they don't want to be watching over a toddler away from its parent either.

@whodawhodaeho It is legal. CAA guidance - guidance, not rules - states that parents should - should, not must - be seated next to their kids, with next to including in rows behind or in front, or across the aisle.

Every thread on this topic is full of people saying it’s illegal because they think it should be. It isn’t.

Press call button, ask cabin crew to locate parent. Every single time.

Yes it’d be annoying. But not as annoying as parents gleefully thinking that they can get out of paying because they have a toddler that’ll annoy the tits off a person who has paid.

I'm not sure it's even legal to seat kids that young away from parents, it's certainly against plane safety rules.

Which are? I think you might be surprised about what if any rules exist...

And FWIW commercial aviation is exempt from a lot of "ground level" legislation (e.g. a lot of Health and Safety), so do all the UK safeguarding regs/requirements apply?

You shouldn't 'expect' a service you have actively chosen not to pay for just because you have a two-year-old. You can decide that you are fairly likely to get that service, but you can't 'expect' it.

Chances are they'll seat you with your kid if possible. However, if they don't, you have zero entitlement to kick up a fuss and zero entitlement to ask other people to move, because not paying was your decision. So it's up to you whether you want to chance it for the sake of saving £20. But assuming that they will have to seat you with your toddler even though you didn't pay for that seat allocation is not remotely reasonable.

FWIW I wouldn't move for you and neither would I make even the slightest attempt to keep an eye on your toddler if they were sat next to me when you were four seats behind.

@yogasaurus earphones don't stop a toddler mauling at you and climbing all over you.

Trust me on this. It is not worth the hassle for the cabin crew, having younger kids and adults separated.
Easyjet let you 'check in' a month before the flight. You'll see the seat allocation then. At that point you can choose other seats if you need to but me DW and now 13 and 11 year old have NEVER been separated. Not even into 1 adult, 1 child in one spot then the other 2 somewhere else.

The CAA advise that families are seated together and kept together because in an emergency parents trying to reach each other and kids will slow down an evacuation.

I have to do a safeguarding course every single year for my voluntary work and have worked with smalls all my adult life so I am aware of the potential risks to stranger adults in taking responsibility for a child. Especially if there was a problem. Let be fair these adult are also not being asked they are being forced and actually paying for the privilege. Those consequences in this day and age may not be legal but as a result of social media. Did you read about the pediatrician who ended up with a baying mob outside his house because the mob didn't understand the difference between a pediatrician and a pedophile.

Consider a scenario a small child will not remain seated during sever turbulence. They are frightened and they have lost it. Lets make them say 6 so they have some body weight and strength. (I come from an airline family turbulence can bodily throw people around. My mother was nearly killed by a drinks trolly as a stewardess during turbulence because she and it got airborne) So do you A. man handle the child into its seat potentially bruising it or do you B. let it go and be potentially severely hurt. That is a loose loose situation for the adult concerned. There are potential legal and social consequences for both options.

Consider then forcing a child into a oxygen mask... or not.
Getting a child off a plane if it ditches in the sea or not...

No one should be forced to babysit someone elses child. No one should be left babysitting a child for potentially 14 hours many in the dark without a CRB check. It just should not be allowed. Children are not allowed to travel alone under 16 on most airlines for safety and safeguarding reason. If you separate the children from their parents they the are effectively travelling alone. Children traveling have been groped by adult passengers unfortunately here is a link https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/violation-at-30000-feet-in-flight-sexual-assaults#:~:text=FBI%20data%20indicated%20a%2065,for%20help%20following%20an%20attack. But also a innocent passenger could also be accused of something they didn't do.

I have never EVER been separated from the kids. I fly Eastjet with kids 4-6 times a year. BA & Virgin Internationally. NEVER EVER. No airline is going to sit your 2 year old away from you.
I'm not sure it's even legal to seat kids that young away from parents, it's certainly against plane safety rules.