Paying for seat choices on planes

[EmpressSoleil]

DS is in Japan at the moment and flew into Haneda so I was watching the news about the plane crash.

An aviation safety expert was commenting and he said (very strongly) that the practice of paying to choose your seat needs to stop as when people don't pay they are often separated. Then in a crash scenario, they will be looking for their partner or child etc and it could delay evacuation with fatal results. Which all makes sense.

So I wondered how many people don't pay and what they think they would do in that situation? I have adult DC I sometimes travel with and we've sometimes sat a few rows apart. On a short flight especially we dont see the point in paying the extra.

It's made me think that I probably would now have a conversation before our next flight and say that in a worst case scenario they need to just evacuate and not look for me, and vice versa. Although in practice it's probably very hard to go against your instincts.

I just pay. I see it as part of the cost.

Crashes in commercial flights planes are ridiculously rare.

Well yes I do know that! But I just thought the expert raised an interesting point.

This is something which is such a rare occurrence I wouldn't worry about it.

DH and I just booked a UK to UK flight for a funeral. The tickets were £16pp, but they wanted £7 pp per flight to choose seats - why on earth would we pay that?
We'd have happily sat separately - I even joked it'd increase the chances of kids having one parent survive a crash if we sat one at the front, one at the back...
But they put us together anyway, so we saved £28 for the same result - it's such a con.
If we crashed I have no idea what I'd do - I'm sure instinctively I'd want to know he is OK too, so perhaps would delay it.

Clearly something has been lost in translation. I'm not worried. I just think it's interesting and something I would now probably mention to my DC. Same as I told them if we ever have a fire get out and don't try and get the pets! It's not going to keep me awake at night!

I generally pay, but the expert makes a very good point. If it is likely to compromise safety, the practice of charging for seats should stop.

Crashes are so rare and surviving crashes rarer still so I can't say it's ever factored into my thinking. I just don't pay the extra - it's complete nonsense on the airlines' part.

It's part of the pricing strategy on most airlines now. If they stop doing it it will just be added on to everyone's ticket, and people travelling alone or who don't care where they sit will end up paying more. If you think you might run the wrong way down an exploding plane to look for your DP then probably best pay the extra for seat allocation...I'd be the first one down the bouncy ramp!

I don't know how much people have seen if it but those people were actually very lucky to all survive (sadly not so for the other plane) and it was literally the speed with which they evacuated that avoided any deaths.

Not really.

There were a grand total of 39 accidents out of 9.3 Million flights in 2022.

Some killed all on board. Sitting apart made no difference
Some were freight with no members of the public. Some were very small aircraft with a dozen passengers. So sitting apart makes no difference.

out of the ~30 flights remaining, how many rescues/recoveries etc were actually hampered by those sitting apart?

I'll bet none. Most people survived with no or few injuries. Even if the separate seating hampered every attempt of rescue...it's still 30ish flights of varying sizes in 9.3 million

I should think more rescues have been hampered by large crowds at events. As seen on NYE when the 16yo boy i. London was stabbed and the ambulances struggled to get through the crowds, and the boy died.

https://www.psbr.law/aviation_accident_statistics.html#:~:text=How%20Many%20Plane%20Crashes%20Have,total%20aviation%20accidents%20in%202022.

I don't remember the guys name now but he was something like chief exec of UK flight safety, something along those lines. Not just some random.

Generally I would just pay to sit together.

However, there are other reasons than a crash where a plane might need to be evacuated quickly such as a fire, security issues, faults etc

I think passengers in general want to make sure family members are safe but that is infinitely more so with children.

Airlines are supposed to make sure children sit with a parent/guardian but that doesn't mean next to and doesn't always happen.

I think most parents are going to find their children first rather than exit the plane which could include hindering egress and physically climbing over other passengers.

So while I don't think it's a thing you should be massively worried about, I do think it's a safety issue that airlines ignore so they can make extra money.

Crashes are extremely rare and in a plane is probably the safest place you can ever be.

Though if it is led to one less reason for Ryanair or others to make an extra charge, I'd support a change to ban such a charge.

The aviation companies won't care. All they care about is making as much money as they can.

The safety aspect is certainly a factor in my opinion, but mainly it's that in general if people are buying plane tickets together, it's probably safe to assume they would rather sit together than apart. I really dislike this practice of picking apart plane tickets into so many optional extras that it denegrates what should be standard customer service.

It was a very impressive evacuation.

Ryanair would charge you for oxygen masks if that wasn't illegal!

I just pay it and think of it as part of the holiday cost. I can see the safety argument though - people would probably try to locate their family in the event of an emergency.

I always pay to sit with my family. It’s really unlikely that something will go wrong but if it does then I’m best places to deal with it if we are sat immediately next to one another. I can’t imagine a pressure drop and trying to support a child across the aisle one row behind whilst dealing with things myself.

I always pay for a seat, it’s just part of the cost for me. I probably fly once a month and it’s not worth it for me to have a horrible seat, I would rather not travel. I get claustraphobic though and only like the aisle seat. I also wouldn’t want to be seperated from my 3 year old or husband.

@EmpressSoleil if there are only two travelling then only one needs to pay for a seat to ensure you sit together. on check in have a look at both the seats offered for both people. they are usually next to an empty seat. decide which of the two offered seats are where you want to be in the plane and buy the other one. it is a nightmare for more than two travelling though. i much preferred the old way when you booked and all seat allocations were next to each other.

I think he's right, and anyway, not paying for specific seats never used to mean you were split up (unless it was late and the plane was already full) your party would be together in whatever space was available which balanced the plane properly.

It is Ryanair that have an algorithm that fills the plane from front to back (or vice versa) skipping a row each time rather than across rows, and therefore split people up on purpose.

I always pay to sit together but my DD has additional needs and part of them is anxiety. However thinking about emergency situations does come into that as well. I prefer us all being together.

I have thought about this myself. I have two children, one 11 and one 13. We don’t pay to sit together and so far have always been sat together.
I do agree though that in an emergency I would of course get my children if they weren’t close to me and this may compromise mine or other people’s safety. But there’s no way I would just let them get out by themselves and hope for the best.