Ryanair made 4yr old sit alone

If you tried that with me I’d turn to both you and your 4 year old and inform you that I wouldn’t be happy to cuddle them and I’d be more likely to be worried and screaming if I was moved from my pre booked seat away from my partner.

I’m scared of flying so I pay for extra leg room seats at the front of the plane next to DP. I like to be near the front as I can see the cabin crew just getting on with their jobs which is reassuring.
I paid £180 in June for our seats each way to Tenerife with TUI, I would have preferred not to but accept that if I want specific seating I have to reserve it.

I was asked to move from my window seat to swap for someone’s child and when I refused they kept letting them come and stand in front of my seat (I’m 4’10 so there was a gap with it being extra legroom) to look out of the window, when I asked the child who was about 5 to go and sit down I got called selfish and asked why I wanted to ruin a child’s holiday, I ignored what was obviously an attempt to intimidate me to give up my seat.

A few years ago travelling to Turkey there was a couple with a toddler already sat in the seats we paid for as they had been split up, I had to ask cabin crew to step in and help when they refused to move. It’s interesting that they chose to sit in decent seats rather than asking people further back without extra leg room to swap! They took a lot of persuading to move.

Why should I give up seats I’ve budgeted for as part of my holiday and booked in advance to suit my needs because some parents don’t want to pay and instead think they can use tactics to get people to move like telling their children a random adult would cuddle them if they felt sick?! And would you really want to encourage your child to be cuddled up with a stranger? My partner would probably wink at you if you said that to him and say “course I’ll cuddle your child” in a hope that you’d see how inappropriate that is.
Encouraging your child to scream as well is just going to piss of lots of people who absolutely don’t deserve it and who don’t need to suffer from a parent failing to prepare.

Paying for seats has been around for ages and it’s so that airlines can offer budget prices if you don’t need any extras, it’s like a pp said, it’s the same as paying for a child seat for your car if you need to. It would make sense to incorporate the seat price into the ticket price but not everyone is bothered about where they sit. It’s the same as paying for luggage, the ticket price is for the cost of travel, the rest is extras that not everyone needs and it’s the same with most airlines now.

What I can't understand is how you were able to book the flight & pay without choosing seats & paying for at least one adult. I have been flying with Ryanair for a long time & was never able to even move on before selecting at least one adult seat so that I could choose seats for the rest of the booking. It states clearly that one adult must reserve a seat for children to be seated next to

Yes you pay if you want to choose your seats or not if happy with a random allocation. And for parents and child that means if they don’t pay they are placed in a random pair of adjacent seats.

Go to Bott & Co, they will get them compensation. They obviously take a cut from it but its better than nothing.

No I was replying to the poster who said that everyone has to pay for seats on ryanair.

I told her that is wrong.

We are given a choice to either pay or not pay for seats

You are confusing paying for specific seats with sitting together. A parent and child can be randomly allocated two seats next to each other somewhere in the plane.

No, they can't, unless they were prepared to compensate the person who moved of course.

Every time I have booked a seat it is in the T&Cs that your seat is not guaranteed and you could be moved by flight crew.

But surely you've just proved the point that people are making. Sensible parents pay extra to book whatever seats are needed to ensure that a child is not seated without a parent. You have booked seats for your partner and your child so that your child is not sat alone. Why couldn't the OP have done likewise?

My DS & his 3 friends were severely delayed on a return Ryanair flight last year. Didn’t get home till 24 hours later than they should have. Never received the compensation they were legally entitled to. As 18 yr olds with little experience dealing with customer services they gave up after a few months of getting nowhere with them. Still annoys me that Ryanair got away with it!

You said "you have to pay for seats with Ryanair".

You don't have to pay for seats with ryanair.

When you buy a ticket you are given a choice.

It's says clearly that you can

"not pay for seats, if you do this, you will be seated randomly By ryanair"

Or You can choose to

"Pay for the seats that you want"

You are told this several times when you book.

OP chose not to pay so she was seated randomly.

So you didn’t book seats for such a big party together? If everyone else booked why should they be expected to move?
ryanair is cheap airline everyone knows that so don’t expect a fabulous service

How can they guarantee a child will be sat by an adult if lots of other passengers have reserved seats and there are no two available seats together?
If there are two seat together when booking then these should be allocated, if not then they shouldn’t be able to book on the plane.

I think a lot of the mean girls on here who are roaring “pay for a seat” don’t fly with kids under 12 and therefore don’t understand the situation! She would have paid for seats - you HAVE to with Ryanair. Children get free seats but they must be in designated “included” rows and parents are automatically charged for a seat in that row - for 3 kids both parents would have automatically paid for seats.

The problem lies in that the seats you pay for are in specific rows and if those rows sell out you have to pay the difference to upgrade the adult seats but the kids lose their free seats entirely so you have to pay full whack for their seats too. It’s a terrible system, effectively charging you twice for seats if they’re not reserved early enough. I suspect OP didn’t understand what to do or booked too late when they “included” rows were already booked.

I am flying to Spain in 2 weeks on a full flight - there were not 3 seats left together in “included” rows, only in the most expensive rows so we would have been paying again for seats we already paid for to sit together. I booked my partner and toddler together in the “included” seating rows (hers free, his included in the mandatory charge for parent seats) - I am sat two rows apart on the aisle in a more expensive seat. I will ask the solo traveller on the aisle if they want to swap but if they don’t it’s not an issue as my partner usually leaves me deal with my toddler on flights while he snoozes and she is hard work on flights lol (may secretly be hoping for one of you mean girls to be on the end to say no so I can read for 3 hours).

You pay to reserve seats together if that is important to you. How can they guarantee a child will be sat by an adult if lots of other passengers have reserved seats and there are no two available seats together? Your attitude comes across as you have saved money, not paying to reserve seats, assuming other people would move to accommodate you or Ryanair staff would sort it out.

It's a lottery with seating, sometimes even if you've paid.

Is it worth paying extra for insurance when you check out, is the ticket not already insured?

Young children absolutely should be put next to parents at booking, automatically, without additional charge. I am surprised that this isn’t a legal requirement. What do people think would happen in an emergency when the plane needs evacuated fast? Parents would absolutely go for their children blocking the aisle rather than escaping. That would put all passengers at risk.

So you didn't pay for seats together but expect other people who did to move to accommodate your family. You are being unreasonable

📢 just book seats together 📢

Seriously, you have young kids so just ensure you're together by spending the extra few pounds and booking seats together. It's no one else's fault if you're a cheap arse.

Everyone knows that Ryanair is shit and awful, and a bad experience

They are the budget airline of the budget airlines.

You get what you pay for. They're a cheap no frills experience.

If you want a better experience, you have to pay a bit more.

Do you think a human being is allocating the seats?

An automatic system does it.

Then patronize those other airlines?

I agree, Ryan air are totally shite (and always have been) and I for one will be avoiding them in the future.

That said, last time we travelled, I was automatically booked in next to my youngest DS. I didn’t pay extra to reserve seats for the eldest two as they weren’t bothered - on both flights they were split up, as were all other travellers who didn’t pay the extra.

The scratch card thing is ridiculous - almost embarrassing for them.

Generally people book seats at the time of booking the flight, you don't need to wait til check in to do it.

TUI definitely give you the option at the time of booking. The travel agent should have asked you if you wanted to book seats, seems like an oversight on their part.

@YourLastNerve I totally agree with you. It's really horrible to purposefully split families up like that and seat young children away from their parents. At least easyjet put groups together where they can.

Ryanair mess up their own policies all the time and it shouldn't be the clients responsibility to sort out. The other day I flew with them and I had a lap infant and they assigned me an emergency exit row which isn't allowed and had to swap me. Same happened to my friend. Found it really stressful. I'd rather not fly with them but they go from the local airport.

Indeed! On my recent Ryanair flights it was quite obvious that most hadn’t paid as couples /groups queuing together were all then seated separately. I disagree with the policy of making people pay to sit together! But my family are all adults now so it’s no problem for us to sit separately on a shortish flight. If it was long haul I would pay.