Paid for seats on ryan air and kids still sat separately

I’ve never gotten money back from Ryanair despite various mess ups. I mean you are entitled to your money back and you can try but I wouldn’t invest too much time into it

Yes indeed. If you were at the gate as soon as it opened, it may not have happened, and if it did you’d have had more time to dig your heels in.

Take it all the way OP! They treated you appallingly. How thick are those staff if they didn’t realise there may be an anxious parent or two if they separated a family who paid for seats together?!

One bit of feedback - always get to the gate early! If you hadn’t been last to queue up then you might not have got split. It sucks but it’s true.

If you paid for seats to be sat together then you should definitely get a refund. All the other fuss you’re making is a load of drama. A 10 year old is absolutely fine to be sat on a plane for a 2 hour flight, especially if they are with a sibling. It sounds like you were late to board if you were one of the last ones on. I
travelled alone as a child all the time from the age of 8. No big deal really. I also never pay for seats when I travel with dc, 6,10,14. Most of the time we’re sat together but we were recently separated on a flight to Kenya. It’s not the end of the world.

That's awful, I have had this with Aegean - so not even a budget airline - we paid for seats that I'd selected and then they reallocated us different seats when boarding passes were printed, we were separated into 2 groups. I didn't complain but was peed off, but if we'd been completely separated from DC I would have.
No idea why they change your seat allocation after you've selected seats and paid extra for the privilege of doing so!! but it happened to me too:(

It does sound like you got to the gate last minute if you were one of the last on board and were actually being told to sit down or they’d miss their window. That’s a lesson. Be there in plenty of time. Even if you’ve paid, they fuck things about. Don’t be last.

You should go after refunds though, and complain about the behaviour of the cabin crew.

Sounds like Ryanair
the 10yo should have been seated with one of their parents.

I would not have been happy if my 10yo was sat alone with a stranger who may not have wanted to help them in an emergency.

make a complaint publicly on social media and request a refund and an explanation as to why your 10yo was seated alone without his parents despite you paying for 4 seats together.

They’ve likely changed aircraft last minute and just allocated everyone randomly.

That’s really shit OP and i really hope you get your money back!

they are so weird - we didnt pay for seats to be together (outrageous imo) and they put us all together for free 😂Did you raise it with them?

I would be pursuing a refund quite publicly on their social media. That's really poor on their part.

Presumably cist about £24 (assuming £5.99 rock bottom prices) but you and your DH were sat together? So can't complain about this. And the dc sat together? Why didn't you sit in adult child combination?

Chalk it up to ryanair shittiness. They don't care and you'll have no joy getting them to refund.

I find this hard to believe.

Ryanair mandates that children aged 2 to 11 must be seated next to an accompanying adult.

Why would four seats that you had booked, paid for, selected, checked in on and been given boarding passes for, etc. be given away to random adults. It does not make sense.

ok so did you get names? especially of the one who said they knew a family had been separated?

Write to the head of the company, anyone else you can find in the company and at least ask for your seat booking money back.

That's pretty shit, tbh.

🙄

there are a lot of people on this thread who are clearly not regular fliers with this complete armpit of an airline.

Like others I only use them when there is no other option, or the costs of another option are so prohibitive that I’m left with Ryanair. The only time I’ve had a pleasant experience with them was when Michael O’Leary was on my flight.

@Hookahchakkah I have had success with their complaints procedure in the past (not for this, for something else) but be prepared to be in for the long haul and to be told that the T&Cs mean that they can make changes even if you’d paid. Also, depending on whether you were flying from one of their hubs, they may well blame the third party ground staff.

Good luck.

We had similar with easyjet, morning flight out moved to afternoon so overnight stay that we'd paid for was no longer needed. Fortunately we were able to change the dates on the overnight stay but still very annoying.

That's pretty rubbish OP and airline staff never seem to give a shit no matter who you fly with tbh. Wouldn't it be nice if they said 'I'm so sorry that happened to you, I don't know what went wrong but I'll see what can be done as soon as possible.'

Definitely put in a claim to get your money back.

Why is that what you wonder? Are they supposed to tag team the staff or try to bully them together?

You only need one adult to advocate for the family in this instance? Either the mother and father are capable of this. So not sure why you're trying to shift focus on the issue and turn it into 'look at the terrible man doing nothing whilst OP struggles'.

You have a ten year old that you wanted to check on, but not the other child, so I’m assuming they are older. How old? A two hour flight they should be fine on, get them to treat it as an adventure. Nothing is going to happen to them, they’d be fine sat on devices/reading a book/colouring or whatever. I’m assuming they swapped you for people with young children who needed caring for. It’s shit, and I’d be pissed off too, but I wouldn’t be worried about a 10 year old on a flight tbh, although I would definitely want the extra cash refunding. It would be nice if it was out of the pockets of the cheapskates that didn’t pay extra but took your seat though!

Only other thing I wonder is, what was your husband doing whilst you were up and down, running about the plan and begging flight crew?

Should be, but I bet they’ll try their best not to!

Not trying to be negative but RyanAir and similar can be fuckers

Also whilst on a ryanair rant we're going to Tenerife in a few weeks. I booked morning flights from Glasgow Prestwick, paid for carpark and overnight airport hotel all 6 months in advance. 6 weeks ago receive an email to say outgoing and return flights had moved to 9 hours later both days. The original flight date/times magically appear at Edinburgh airport the same day.

So you try and be organised and book things well in advance only for the airline to find a way of screwing you. The whole reason I booked morning flights was I was sick of missing the first day of holiday because of annoying afternoon flights.

This also sounds like one of the many reasons I avoid RyanAir like the plague!

Its not just the fact there was a mess up, it’s the lack of any customer care after that.

That said, a 10 yo with something to do (even if a tablet or whatever) ought to be OK by themselves if it came to it - ie it was a customer service / financial fuck up on their party not an actually dangerous one.

Yes, you should definitely be refunded for the seat allocation if you did not get what you paid for, however, if your boarding passes were for what you'd paid for then I don't see how you can prove to Ryanair that you did not occupy those seats.

I know that they say you "must" occupy the seat it says on you boarding pass, but if my ten year old was on her own at the back of the plane I would not hesitate to swap seats with her so she could sit near DH and her brother.