We paid for the seats next to each other and checked the boarding passes and went to the airport, checked in went through to security, had a sandwich and went to the gate.
At the gate they said these aren’t your seats anymore we have to move you. We said no we’ve paid to sit together and one of us is ten. They said sorry try on the plane, we said no help is now, can you at least switch the seats so the ten year old isn’t by himself they said no. We said who can we speak to they said just get on the plane. We said he can’t sit 23 rows away from us they said madam get on the plane. We were almost last on and tried to speak to the steward was but there was anbkuncmenet which said get to your seats now we are going to miss the air traffic window, i begged someone to swap (which they did reluctantly before I got told to sit and showed the original seats so the kids could at least sit together but they were a few rows from my husband. I went to the other end of the plane and I tried to get their attention and gave up.
as soon as I could I grabbed an air hostess and said my kids are by themselves she said you’ll have to wait for seatbelts
as soon as seatbelts went off I went down to check on them and the drinks trolley was coming up. The stewatdesss told me to go back and wait and I said “my kids have been say by themselves can I check on them”
the other stewardess said very loudly what’s going on and the first one said “she wants to check on her kids”
the other one said very loudly “well that’s convenient timing isn’t it” and I said loudly to her “you’ve sat our kids by themselves even though we paid, can i just check that they are ok please”
qns she rolled her eye and roll ed the trolley back.
I checked very quickly they were fine which was a relief and they were waiting impatiently.
I said “we’ve paid to sit together and you’ve sat us all separately” and she said “oh yeah we did know there was a family of four that had been separated.
I asked what had happened and she said she didn’t know.
there was one spare seat near so me and my husband and I sat five and seven rows back.
it was only a two hour flight and we were about 45 minutes in by this time. She came and asked us if we wanted to all be moved to sit together and most people around us were either asleep or with small kids but I don’t understand if they knew we were separated before we even got on the plane that they allowed this to happen.