Plane seats - refused to swap

I'm ignoring the DH issue

It's pretty easy to find out a flight if you know the airline, day and airport. You then look up their seating policy online. I'm surprised that any airline YES EVEN RYANAIR would let 5 and 8 year olds sit away from their parents. I flew BA last month and did not reserve seats (not that bothered about paying £200 to sit next to my sleeping teen sons for 2 hours) but we were all in the same row on both legs. BA policy is to always sit under 12s next to at least one adult on the booking.

You can probably check in now depending on the airline you are travelling with, easyjet for instance opens check-in about a month before the flight. When my kids were little I made sure I checked in for any flight on the date it opened.

Where does your twat of a husband get off telling you he won't give you the details of the return flight in case you fuck it up when he is the one who fucked up the outbound flight?

He's proven he's capable of getting it wrong, you haven't.

It is definitely a change in recent years and especially on budget airlines (I’ve had it on Jet2 as well as Ryanair). You used to always choose seats at check in (I’m old enough to remember when there was no online option!) and they would move things around to seat kids with their parents but now they have realised that it’s yet another ‘extra’ they can charge for that used to be included along with food and luggage. Now the option to choose your seats is there at booking and although you can decline and have random seats for cheaper you wouldn’t do it if it mattered ie with kids. This has led to a lot harder culture where people are a whole lot less amenable to swopping than they were as they assume people are pulling a fast one and trying to get something they didn’t pay for.

Your DH fucked up and should have the good grace to admit it. I’d be furious with him. But it’s really not fair to plead with people to swap seats to accommodate you. It’s not their problem.

So he's lying about that as well then. No wonder he won't let you see the booking details.

This is what I would have thought.

I’ve very little sympathy with you being sat separately as you need to book seats in advance not hope to sit together at check in 24 hrs before when all that is left are seats that less miserly people haven’t booked . WRT your husband , you picked him , you had 2 kids with him and it’s up to you if you wish to put up with his behaviour , I wouldn’t .

That’s a strange story tbh, I picked random allocation (which is free) for DH and I, using expedia, but booking across two airlines: Tui and Easyjet, London - Greece. Both airlines separately prompted us to check in days before the flights were due, which I did as prompted. The check in prompt would be in OP’s husbands email for sure, so all you need to do to ensure you’re allocated together is retrieve this email and check in asap when you receive it. If you do this you shouldn’t have to pay for allocation.

Same here.

I tried to offer some constructive advice, as a retired senior travel executive, and my message has also been hidden. 😳

I did mention one airline but have seen same referred to many, many times on Mnet so don't see what the issue is.

I’d want into his phone to see what’s going on.

Can you watch him put his passcode in or hold the phone to his face or finger when he’s asleep? If he doesnt like it then he shouldn’t have been such an ignorant prick and paid the money. He likely thought someone would switch and Hes save £50 or something. Clearly not. Prick.

Planes do sometimes have issues and in the event of a fire or something youll be trying to run in the opposite direction to those leaving to gwt to dc and causing problems or get trampled. It’s madness.

It really isn’t good enough. We need some kind of law that says under x age must be sat next to a parent.

Do you have your boarding pass still? It would have a ticket number and you can go from there. Alternatively, tell him you don’t want to end up in the same situation so please give the ref number ( Expedia will be different from the airline but is buried somewhere in emails although if you have the Expedia one you may be able to see it there too). Don’t back out- what do you think will happen if you insist?

Couldn't the two children have sat together and you sat between the two men?

The guidance (not a rule) is that minors have to be adjacent to the travelling adult. Adjacent does NOT mean beside. It can be across the aisle or one row forward or back.

This!!! There is no way I would let my H book flights ever again after screwing up so badly. I would have been incandescent with rage at him if my 8 year old had to sit between two blokes. What the bloody hell?!! And he thinks you can’t be trusted to book flights?!!

Tell him now. I will never again set foot on a plane unless I have booked the flight and reserved the seats.

What, now? How is a travel agent going to get her the details of her DH's booking??

OP, do you know what the "error" was? Can you ask your H exactly what happened? Maybe phrase it along the lines of "What do we need to do to make sure it won't happen again on the way home?"

If he's telling the truth, then there's no reason for him not come clean about it. But if he's at all cagey about telling you, that sounds like a red flag.

Your dh isn’t old fashioned. Like you say. Yes being a knob.

the irony that he’s worried you will mess up the booking when he couldn’t even figure out how to deject seats. If it didn’t work he should have logged out and tried again. And then contacted the airline directly. And why were sears not booked when booking?

Two parts to this.
Firstly, your dh chose not to pay and waited for the 24h before check in, which went wrong. Even if it hadn't gone wrong there may not have been seats available as most people who want to sit together now choose and pay for seats at the time of booking.
Secondly, you can't book seats together in advance unless your dh does it through the booking. He will need to select and pay for seats together for your return journey (if there are any left), this is because he will be marked as the lead passenger and so only he can make amendments to the original booking.

Yep! This is what we do! Im normally with the kids, DH across the aisle. Costs more but keeps us together.

Which airline are you flying with OP?

Your post sounds like it may be Ryanair who will hardly ever seat you together if you don't pay in advance and those who don't pay are usually allocated middle seats well away from the other passengers on the same booking reference. ☹️
(Although they normally charge a huge amount per passenger at the airport if you haven't checked in online and printed off your boarding passes unless things have changed in recent years.)

If it is Ryanair/whichever airline really you need to tell DH to prepay for seats for the return flight online asap otherwise chances are very high that you will have the same scenario upon your return. ☹️

To prepay for seats/check in online he needs the airline booking reference and not an Expedia generated reference. The airline reference should be shown on your paperwork.