Ryanair made 4yr old sit alone

Frankly if you fly with Ryanair it's not going to be a particularly fun experience but, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. I usually fly with Ryanair because of price but I always reserve seats, particularly as DD has SN.

I've just booked flights with them and had thought of treating ourselves to Jet2. They were nearly £400 more expensive for exactly the same route and with more inconvenient timings. On a relatively short haul flight I'd rather put up with Ryanair and have the extra money to spend on holiday. I wouldn't dream of not booking seats however.

YABU to not have pre-booked seats. But I’m amazed that any stranger wouldn’t gladly swap seats for the opportunity to NOT sit next to someone else’s 4 year old!

Or we've already paid and pre booked our seats and so will not be moving for a family of cheeky fuckers who didn't bother

DH and I never prebook, we don’t mind not sitting together.
Last time we flew in September there was a family who had had to rebook their flights last minute due to a family emergency so they were no longer seated together. We were as a fluke sat together on this occasion, so we said ok we’ll move. DH ended up with the extra legroom seat on the way there and I got it on the way back. Win win!

Your responsibility at booking stage to pay the extra and book seats together, it's shit but it's the way Ryanair does things. Sound like a horrible experience and if you didn't realise how it works then you'll know next time, if you were hoping for the best and not keen to pay the extra charge then yabu.

I would swap because I wouldn’t want to sit next to a young vomiting child, but I’d be pretty pissed off if I’d paid for my seat. And to be honest I’d probably make a half joke about the parent reimbursing me. For a slightly older non vomiting child, I would not swap. We all know it’s shit that you have to pay if you want to sit together, but if that’s the only way of guaranteeing it then you have to suck it up. It’s incredibly selfish for non paying parents to assume passengers that paid for their seat will happily swap with them so they can sit with their kid.

You just have to chalk this up to your oversight here, I think.

I'm happy to be freighted like cattle for the money saved by going with cheap airlines but insuring yourself from situations like this by putting your hand in your pocket to be seated with your children is necessary.

So you made your children sit alone because you are too tight to pay to sit with them??
And you then think this is the airline or other passengers problem??
Jesus!

I suspect that Ryanair have a very loose interpretation of this, and that it's ANY adult rather than the child's responsible adult that is required to meet the letter of the policy.

Pay for seats together. Our flight home this year was delayed for 30 minutes while the cabin crew had to scramble around asking people to swap seats for a family too cheap to pre-book. It was a flight full of families so understandably, no one wanted to move.

A single passenger ended up feeling like they had to move after the whole family stood there looking sad, apparently oblivious to the mood of everyone else on the plane.

I would swap for a 4yo to be able to sit with a parent. Probably not for a 7yo though, unless they seemed very upset.

In either scenario, though, I would be spitting bullets with the parents for having been so irresponsible and for failing to make arrangements to ensure that they could look after their children properly. Especially if I had paid extra to reserve a seat of my choosing, which I usually do. It is incredibly selfish to just get on the plane and expect everyone else to accommodate because you're too tight to pay a few quid extra to reserve seats like everyone else does.

Indeed, one woman was was crying as her child had special needs and wasn't sat with her. Proper tantrum.

You'll get a load of huffy bootlickers who will always back the big corporation no matter how poorly they behave so I would try to ignore them OP. YANBU at all, notoriously terrible Ryanair are by failing to follow their own policies and having useless staff.

I would always go out my way to help a family on a plane (or any public transport). But some people are poorly raised and don't have much social conscience at all. I'm sorry it was so stressful for you all.

If you paid in advance to sit together, which is the responsible thing to do, then YANBU. If you didn’t bother then YABU.

This is totally on you for not booking seats

You know you have young children and you know they suffer from travel sickness. it is on you to book seats together, there can't be anyone on the country that doesn't know that and that Ryan Air are abysmal.

Ryanair is always late these days, always hours late and the seats are covered in food. Horrible. I beat my colleague to Belgium by going on the train last year, and didn't arrive covered in the partially chewed discarded crisps of a stranger.

This is why I accept that we have to pay for seat reservations. Leaving it to chance isn’t worth it.

You should still complain OP as it is against their policy.

Sorry, but if you want to sit together you need to pre-book seats. It's very easy. As a parent, if you are bothered about yoyr chikd/children sitting alone this is a must instead of moaning on mumsnet.

It this policy makes no sense- it is mandatory for children to sit with an adult but yet the adult has to pay to get the mandatory seats next to each other?

That's plain nasty. No reason why people who have paid extra to sit together should be expected to give up their seat to someone who didn't. It's not the fault of other people. It's the airline's policy that is stupid. It ought to be obvious to everyone ( Ryan Air included) that if enough people book to sit together and pay, there may well be people who haven't done so and CANNOT be accommodated to sit together as a result if they waited until they checked in online?

I loathe Ryanair. They treat customers like cattle. I don't want to trust a company with my life if they don't show basic respect. I'd rather not fly than go with Ryanair or easyJet, after some bad experiences.

Can't afford anything more expensive (and, you know, carbon emissions and destruction of earthly life) so we just don't fly.

I feel sorry for the poor person sitting next to the 4 year old!

And are you saying that you asked the person to swap seats and they said No, that they WANTED to sit next to the kid? I find that very hard to believe, especially as I bet the kid was in the middle seat so it wasnt as if you were splitting up 2 people sitting together

Not an airline I’d ever travel with as I don’t like their whole ethos. However, even I know that if you want to sit together then you pay. TBH, it’s common on all airlines now, we have to pay on VA/Delta to go from UK to the states if we want to sit together.

I wouldn’t swap if I’d paid to sit next to DH and someone who hadn’t paid wanted my seat. Happened to DH once on the way back from the US, he had booked and paid for him and then-DP to sit together, cabin crew asked if they’d ‘mind’ moving as a couple who were on the way back from their honeymoon wanted to sit together. He refused as he said they’d known they were on their honeymoon and they should have paid to guarantee seats together like he’d done.

Why didn’t you pay to choose your seats?