To expect to be allocated airline seats next to my kids?

[correllia]

My partner and I are off on holiday to menorca at the end of September with Monarch. They have emailed us to tell us we can check in online now, which saves time at the airport.

So far so good - but to complete the process I have to prebook my seats at the cost of £5 per seat per flight. We are on a tight budget and deliberately haven't bought the seats in advance to save the pennies.

Kiddies are 2 and 4, whilst I don't mind our sitting 2 and 2 apart from each other but looking at the seat plan even this option is fast disappearing! Can the airline force such young children to sit next to strangers?

Am I unreasonable to demand that we sit with them?

PS this is my first post, so please be genttle :-)

Oh Grovel you're a charmer.

Silverfrog... It does seem to be a very widely interpreted 'rule', doesn't it? I mean, an adult could care for them but whether they would and how leaves too much interpretation.

Your travel agent should really have compensated you for the mess-up with your DD; completely unacceptable. Does the airline not take any notice of 'special needs'?

Wrecka- Ok, let me frame this as a question.

IF you choose to go with an airline which insists that children under, say, 3 are seated with a parent, but you have a 3 yr old and you decide you don't want to part with the extra dosh and will take your chance... If you then ask other passengers to move, how is that not at their expense?? They have either prebooked so paid the extra, or they have got to the seat first and chosen it to suit their requirements. Another passenger expecting them to move is quite clearly expecting it at someone elses expense.

The point about the airline insisting you move is different- because they retain that right. Yes, they don't guarantee you 100% you will get your seat, but if they take a seat surcharge off you, they deserve to be complained at and it might, just might, get a refund. Probably not, but worth a try. Whereas a parent asking another passenger to move is entirely different - they have no right to expect it at all.

silverfrog But I guarantee that had you got on the plane, the airline would have taken one look at the situation and said "right, there's been a screw up. That child cannot sit on her own"

I think that's a different situation to the OP's . I've had the same with DS and I dont even bother looking until the day we fly, and then sort it out when I get to the airport.

I also have to say on your Australia flight that I think it was a reasonable assumption by the airline that 2 x 2 seats one behind the other would be fine. They weren't to know that the 2 year old would freak out sitting next to her own father. Both children were next to a parent.

travel agent did compensate (after a whole catalogue of errors, tbh! have abandond that path now, much easier to hassle th airlines myself daily - at least I know we will get what we need, eventually!)

yes, you can get flagged up as special needs. but that is a one size fits all policy, so eg when dd2 was little and we wanted bulkhead, we couldnt have dd1 designated SN, as that meant we couldn't sit in bulkhead seats.

there is no way the customer service agent can flag up that dd1 needs to be with an adult at all times (given she is now 7 she could be seen as able to sit by herself) without her being listed as disabled in airline terms, which means no upstairs seating, as disabled means you can't walk , and a whole host of other rules that I forget now.

airlines are not good with SN overall, tbh - and getting speciality children's meals is a no-go as well. you can get (just about) all manner of dietary requirements met if you are an adult, but not if you are a child. I do not have children who expect typical "children's meals" (ie nuggets and beans - nothing wrong with them, but my 2 are resonably happy ot eat most typical meals too), but they are often (due to multiple allergies) served eg: 3 bean cassoulet with asparagus and celeriac vegetable medley. just not going to work, really. and of course, restrictions on what you can take on the plane through security made our lives fun when dd1 could only drink (due to allergies) non-standard juice, and refused water (ASD issues). only children under 3 are allowed to take bottles/sports bottles through security, you see, no allowances for other needs... (I know some of this is just our problem, due to specific needs. but there is little leeway, and virtually no compassion when trying to work out how these issues can be managed)

thebride: the airline had been told repeatedly that that solution would not work. the 2 year old needed to be with me (bf), and it was the 4 year old, with severe ASd who woudl freak away form me. so our only solution was to sit me with ASD dd1, and let dd2 wail away... and this was pointed out to them months ahead of time, and regularly until departure date. but still they knew better, leaving other passengers in the lurch when aske dif they would move. we specifically booked 4 seats in a row (2x2 window and centre) meaning that everyone could see each other, but got bumped.

and the year before, we could not get to that point. there is no way we could have got dd1 to separate from me for an instant - at 3 years old with severe ASD, we coudl not take the chance that it woudl not be sorted out. and it seemed to be deemed necessary by the airline several times (despite several explanantions re: disability and age etc). but, for dd1, the knoc-on implications of even trying to tell her that she will be seated apart form me are huge. it is not possible to even contemplate sorting it out at the airport when you are waiting with a severely autistic child - that is why we were booking our seats head of time.

3 bean cassoulet with asparagus and celeriac vegetable medley Who dreamed that one up?

I see your point on the other stuff, although that's more BAA rules than the airlines, and happy to agree that they are rubbishio.

She's just showing off

it is, for future reference, the vegan gluten free option (only way to get gluten and dairy free with airline food!) on BA longhaul flights. or hopefully it isn't anymore.

yes, agree it is BAA, not airlines with the intractable rules but it all makes flying so needlessly complicated.

we jsut needed to be able to take juice ofr dd1 to drink, and get food that she can (and will!) eat on a 24 hour flight... not a lot to ask.

god, no way, Star - you think my girls touched it?! they ate raisins instead, iirc. and a lot of cornflakes (god if anyone ever told me I'd be packing cornflakes in my airline hand luggage pre-children, I'd have thought they were barking mad. but this is what I am reduced to )

Budget airlines are often not really that cheap when you add everything up.

Especially if you have to go in school holidays. Not cheap and cheerful. More like expensive and shite.

*They're not "charging extra". They're stripping out the cost for people who don't care. There is a difference.

If people want the service of a national carrier, they should book one, and not a low cost carrier.

Look, you can pay £10 plus an extra £20 to prebook seats or you can pay £90 and go BA. The low cost carrier is still a bargain by any measure.*

They are charging extra. I have to fly to France to visit family and the days of cheap flights are long over.
There are airport taxes- but they now charge for luggage (they never used to) priority boarding, credit card booking, boarding cards etc.
I find that in the past couple of years the cheapest I have paid has been 90 quid. And yes I would fly BA for that price except they don't fly where I'm going anymore.

Easyjet used to have a policy whereby disabled passengers went on first, followed by family groups with young kids, followed by paid for priority boarding.

Now it's priority boarding followed by young family/disabled. Which is still better than Ryanair who do priority boarding then rugby maul/boxing match to for everyone left. Which seems absurd as there are bound to be seating issues which can then cause delays.
As a result everyone seems to pay for priority boarding these days, which is exactly what the airlines want.

I don't get why they can't pre-assign seats when booking- the way it used to be. If you make a booking for x people it seems logical that said people are travelling together and need seats together. Worst case scenario is then having families split 2 and 2 or 2 and 3, which is totally do-able.

But actually, £90 to fly to France is still pretty cheap if you think about it. We've just got spoilt by the low cost airlines. They've made frequent air travel possible for many people who couldn't have afforded it before. You'd miss them if they went.

Apart from anything else, they force the national carriers to try to compete

Lyingwitch it is in your interest that parents and children are not separated. Because in an emergency a parent would delay your emergency evacuation to try and find his/her child. That is not something they could avoid doing - it is an automatic response to a stressful situation. So actually, your life could be in more danger than if the parent was separated from the child.

If the plane crashes, you're all dead anyway.

The safety talk is just supposed to make you feel like there's a Plan B

donthateme I've already said what I would do in that circumstance. I would ask for a written guarantee from the person sitting next to my child that they would be responsible for emergency assistance for my child. If the passenger sitting next to my child doesn't want to assume that responsibility or the airline won't let them then they shouldn't be left to sit next to my child because it is quite clearly in contravention of the CAA guidelines, possibly invalidating the airline's own insurance and therefore the airline should place the child next to someone who will assume that responsibility. I wouldn't have any right to expect the passenger to move but I do have a right to expect and in fact, demand, that the airline behave compliantly with the law and their own insurance.

I particularly like the bit where they say "If the plane lands on water..." and there's a picture of a plane sitting on top of the sea. Yeah, right. When does that ever happen?

Well said, TheBride. The reason you are called upon to sit with your head between your knees is so that you can kiss your a**e goodbye.

Interesting thread.

I am terrified of flying so always book my seats in advance if possible, or get to check in as early as humanly possible to ensure that I can have a) A window seat and b) at least one member of my family sitting next to me.

My fear fuels my willingness to pay the extra, and I have to say that I find it irritating when that one family stagger onto the plane at the last minute and then expect everyone else to move around for them. I'm usually sobbing into a bottle of vodka orange juice by this point though and I'm frozen in fear.

"Well said, TheBride. The reason you are called upon to sit with your head between your knees is so that you can kiss your a**e goodbye"

There used to be an urban myth that it's so you break your neck and die instantly rather than becoming shark food, but I think that was just bollocks.

Never heard that one and I stand by my theory.

The Bride Hudson river?

Hudson crash wiki

Agree with TheBride about PlanB. Although I and other passengers did need to put oxygen masks on a flight to Shanghai and I was torn between kissing my arse goodbye and suffocating to death. Did not have a clue what was going on at any point whatsoever!

I thought the reason why you are supposed to assume the 'brace' position is to protect your teeth so that dental records can be used to identify you in the event of a crash. Is that not the case?

cleanandclothed... No, it's in YOUR interest to make sure your child is with you otherwise there would be a risk of it being trampled on whilst other people are getting their own children out.